* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Lacey Bryant is a San Jose artist who paints weird things. She works in a variety of media, oil paints being her favorite. She paints primarily on wood surfaces, often utilizing found wood for the unique textures and history they offer. Her subjects are often dreamlike, inhabiting a realm of strange, nostalgic sweetness with undercurrents of darkness and mystery. Each piece is a bit of the middle of a story for the viewer to interpret in their own way. Contrasting cute with creepy, familiar with odd, Lacey sets out to quietly captivate and unnerve her viewers through the underlying tension of her work.
Roots, veins, thread are the language Bryant often uses as metaphors for little connections that reach out and twine around things, getting tangled up or sometimes grasping where there is nothing to hold to. Birds and insects are also prevalent in her work. Her young subjects are the natural caretakers of these small species that are only slightly more fragile than the youngsters themselves.