Of an Incandescent Memory 2020

Lanise Howard made "Of an Incandescent Memory" with paint and a wild imagination. The color palette feels both classical and surreal, like a dream half-remembered. There's this fascinating tension between representation and abstraction, especially in the way she interrupts the scene with those pixelated blocks of color. Look at how the palette seems to cut right through the figures, almost as if she's pulling apart the layers of the painting to reveal its underlying structure, each square like a single bit of data. The artist doesn’t hide the brushstrokes; they're visible, tangible, creating a kind of map on the surface. It reminds me of the fragmented portraits of Francis Picabia, or maybe even the digital glitches we see in contemporary art. It is as if Howard is asking us to think about the nature of memory itself.