The Source was a double-solo show of painting by Lauren Moya Ford and ceramic sculpture by Evan Horn at Northern-Southern in Austin, Texas. From the gallery: “Using quick spreading fountain ink on bespoke papers, Lauren Moya Ford paints with a sure, sensual immediacy. The pictures, which have flowed continuously from her this year, rewrite inherited feminine and Catholic symbols into personal narrative and new archetype: the water, the hair, the hand, the woman, the candle flame. The title "The Source" calls back to two paintings from 1850-60s Paris, one by Ingres and one by Courbet. In each a woman stands under a fountaining spring, perhaps a symbol of endless creative renewal. In the Ingres, she holds jar. At our springs, the woman baptizes herself. Formed from our dry creeks, the earthen jar itself is water.” The exhibition was reviewed by Caroline Frost for Glasstire, and was on view from September 15 to October 15, 2023.
Exhibition installation photos by Alex Boeschenstein.
“The paintings communicate an exuberance in mundanity. Moya Ford captures snapshots of life, stylizing its forms and enhancing its colors to convey the energy and sentiment attached to those experiences in the same way that our memories further abstract their conceptions with each reminisce. Organic in gesture and in subject, the paintings reify how it feels to become spiritually attuned to the humble blessing in life, like a spring or a seashell, that play a small part in making life possible.”
— Caroline Frost, Glasstire, October 9, 2023