Nora Griffin's Solo Exhibition at Louis B. James Gallery Explores Modernist Sensibility

Nora Griffin's solo exhibition at Louis B. James Gallery features paintings that occupy a distinctive space between casual studio notes and deliberate artistic declarations. In a catalog interview with painter Peter Gallo, Griffin characterizes modernism as a sensibility linking emotional interiority with cultural expression. She posits that abstraction emerged specifically to give form to this new sensibility. Throughout the show, androgynous interpretations of faces from Manet's portraits appear frequently, embedded within grounds that are both provisional and art historically aware. Griffin identifies this modernist 'look' in the eyes of Berthe Morisot as painted by Édouard Manet. Her compositions are described as winningly idiosyncratic, balancing gesture, field, and color with an air of studied nonchalance. The work embodies what might be termed a throwaway formalism, achieving a hard-won lightness of spirit. The paintings themselves feel strangely poised, reminiscent of scrapbook entries or wall notations while simultaneously making broader statements.