Twenty-eight of Mia Brownell's paintings will be on display at the Housatonic Museum of Art in the Burt Chernow Galleries from through November 17, 2014. Luscious and sensuous, Mia Brownell's paintings invite us to indulge in "earthly delights" and are themselves ripe with sexual innuendo.
What Brownell asks us to contemplate is the brevity of life. "We begin in the madness of carnal desire and the transport of voluptuousness," wrote the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, "we end in the dissolution of all our parts and the musty stench of corpses." Seventeenth century Dutch still life paintings of tables laden with gastronomic delights served to remind viewers that all things perish but Brownell's fruits invite us to relish the sweetness of now.
Although Mia Brownell's paintings "may recall classical Vanitas paintings, her food-based compositions also invoke contemporary food politics. A critic of the food industrial complex, Brownell creates a juxtaposition between the natural and artificial, modeling her opulent still-lifes after molecular structures. Her depictions of shiny apples, bead-like caviar and juicy grapes look almost too good to be edible, hence the title of her upcoming traveling solo show, Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting.
The exhibition, which premiered at J. Cacciola Gallery in New York, is a ten-year survey of Brownell's paintings (2003-2013) travelled to the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey, Juniata College Museum of Art in Pennsylvania and the final stop at Housatonic Museum of Art in Connecticut."
Gallery hours: Monday- Friday from 8:30am until 5:30pm, Thursdays until 7pm, Saturday from 9am until 3pm and Sunday Noon until 4pm. Please note that the Gallery will be CLOSED Monday. October 13th. For more information visit http://www.housatonic.edu/artmuseum/index.asp
