Heaven 

Dana Levin’s painting, Heaven, makes use of traditional art materials: oil paints, canvas, and brushes. Looking closely, one can see Levin’s attention to the manipulation of paint. The medium’s viscosity allows for smooth gradations of skin tone and cloud cover, as well as more textured areas, like the sitter's hair and the rocky surface. The handling of the paint calls attention to the human hand and gestures that went into its making. The painting’s meaning arises through the artist's labor, not as a sudden flash of inspiration, but through attention to the materiality of oil paint, its capacity for imitation, and its ability to transmit the artist’s vision. It would be easy to take Levin’s practice of painting for granted, yet it depends on a sophisticated system of production from raw materials to manufacturing and distribution, one in which skilled labor is as much a commodity as the materials themselves.