Artist of the Week: Nava Lundy, Romantic Impressionism
Artist Nava Lundy varnishing her paintings
Artist of the Week Nava Lundy has mastered shadowy, dreamlike impressionism.
Working on a dramatic scale, the Florida-based painter creates portraiture that glimmers with a deeply-rooted, feminine strength. Through hazy impressionism, glimmering gold wash, and a romantic color palette, Nava’s female figures are mysterious and intriguing.
In her portraits, Nava often obscures or omits aspects of her figures’ faces, whether iconographically through sunglasses or head-turned posture, or stylistically through indefinite lines and mingled colors. The figures’ unknowability signals to her overall project of conveying feminine strength and power.
“I paint strong women with a sense of mystery behind their beauty. They are all more than just a pretty face and command intrigue and attention,” says Nava.
Nava titles her latest portraits with strong and evocative titles, such as Following Her Heart, Take It Or Leave It, and Me, Myself, and I. Each title is a mantra of independence and self-acceptance. Each painting features a woman, perfectly centered on the canvas facing away from the viewer, communicating a message that is forceful and deep rather than simply ethereal and angelic.
Without the figures losing their power, Nava’s impressionism leaves elements of interpretation to the viewer. Her backgrounds are spare and resemble faded color blocking or sunlit abstraction. The unclear setting, becoming both nowhere and anywhere, is primed to accommodate the nostalgia of any viewer.
Icon (48" x 48") by Nava Lundy, acrylic painting
The style that unifies Nava’s portfolio gestures to the Impressionists, but the individual paintings have a mysterious and blurry resonance all on their own. The colors of her composition flicker between gold wash and the subdued tones, creating an opulence and richness that glamorize everyday subjects.