In Tuned - Acrylic 24'' x 36'' Jim Lively combines traditional portraiture with cutting-edge design and avant-garde composition in his provocative and engaging paintings. His primarily female subjects are often shown in an abstract or semi-abstract realm, but one that still feels rooted in contemporary technology, surrounded as they are with bandwidth color patterns, rows of numbers and text, pixilation and chilly cityscapes. Never truly integrated into these ultramodern environments, Jim’s sirens nevertheless maintain their faith in the familiar blank stare of advertising, that mix of invitation and challenge which is used to sell everything from sex to soft drinks. Yet these icons seem alienated and vaguely lost, transported as they are to a realm where their environment of prefab colors and jagged shapes highlight the unreality of their advertising-borne gaze and by extension, the promises behind the ads. The anxiety wrought by contemporary media is a major subject of these works, especially the concern of feeling alienated from one’s own culture and its expectations. Like an embarrassment of conspicuous riches, the composition at times seems to overwhelm Jim’s subjects, even occasionaly threatening to literally strangle or swallow them. To be sure, these are sirens sweetly singing, but our enjoyment of them, usually unhampered by self-reflection, has been mediated by Jim Lively’s dramatic and satirical imagery.

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