Lyn
Mandelbaum
New York City based artist, Lyn Mandelbaum began
her Card Player Series in 1997 and considers it
a work still in progress. Unlike her other paintings,
The Card Player Series incorporates preexisting
imagery (face cards) as the base. Her reason for
selecting playing cards stems from her interest
in the history of the cards themselves. Originally
intended as tools for divination, over the centuries
they have been stripped of their magic and relegated
into the realm of gaming and gambling. Rigid icons
divested of all human frailties. Lifeless forms,
which she graffiti's over and hangs emotion on.
Physically,
she presents the cards as 3-dimensional line.
Her additions and deletions are surface. This
gives the viewer the ability to perceive two images
simultaneously. The public face / the private
face. A kind of transmutation. She approaches
these paintings almost like objects that she found
rather than created. Ancient manuscripts; an alchemists
hidden stash.
Probably
due to the female aspect, the Queen seems to be
her favorite. With titles like "Queen Caught
Cloaked in Envy", "Queen of Sad Goodbyes",
"A Valentine for the Queen", she reflects
her fears and passions.
When
asked to define her work, Lyn says, "Humanist".
She claims that human frailities motivate and
ultimately control her outcome, and that paintings
are not born from a place of linear, logical,
or preconceived intention but are a synthesis
of intangibles that reside in the realm of intuition.
She paints to express a condition of the soul
that we sense but can't quite possess.
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