Delphine (close-up), oil on canvas

Judith Eisler is a painter who draws inspiration from her works from classic cinema. Creating painted reproductions of video stills from classic films, Eisler blurs the line between types of representation and explores how added layers of visual technology serve to further abstract an image.

Movie Lights 5, oil on canvas

Aesthetically, Eisler’s paintings are quite enticing. I like the way the artist tends to gravitate toward stills that are slightly blurred or in soft-focus, allowing for ambiguity between what qualities of the composition can be chalked up to the nature of paint, what is added through the film process, and what is deliberate. Her paintings often focus on a close-up female face, reminding me of some of the paintings of Andrew Valko.

In other paintings and drawings, Eisler forgoes the human figure altogether, instead focusing on refracted, diffused lights. The images are recognizable as street lamps or studio lighting, but when examined closely the representation image seems to give way to an abstracted pattern.

Judy, graphite on paper