Originally from Minsk, Belarus, Maya Brodsky studied here in the U.S. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the New York Academy of Art.

Her paintings focus on interiors and figures. At times they seem direct portrayals of everyday scenes, at other times they can be somewhat haunting, as if something is slightly amiss, but you can’t quite identify what.

Her compositions are rich with detail, but I never feel as though detail for its own sake — or an approach to hyperrealism — is the point; rather I come away with the thought that Brodsky is speaking to us with the visual texture of her subjects, using it to slow down our scan of the painting and draw us into the subtle emotional responses her work can evoke.

Her website does not seem to have been recently updated, but contains galleries of her work from 2008-2013. I found navigation a bit less than straightforward, but the two pages of most recent work are here and here.

Brodsky’s work will be on display at the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery in NYC in a solo show entitled “Behind Closed Doors”, that runs from September 8 to October 1, 2016, and is concurrent with a solo exhibition of works by her sister, artist Dina Brodsky, who I have featured previously on Lines and Colors.

Willem Maris was a 19th century Dutch painter whose subjects were primarily pastoral scenes of cattle and fowl, though he also painted figurative subjects.

Though his choice of themes remained with him through his career, his approach to painting changed — from straightforward realism to experiments with bold color to the kind of painterly brushwork and broken color associated with Impressionism, leading to his reputation as a “Dutch Impressionist”.

Also consistent through his career was a fascination with the play of light on his subjects, a fascination that naturally dovetailed with his interest in impressionistic effects. Maris worked in both oil and watercolor, as well as producing a number of drawings.