Our neighborhood is home to many artists, and we’ve been curious about what they’ve been up to during the pandemic. So we were delighted to receive an update from Deborah CC Lacroix. We first introduced our readers to the Forest Hills-based painter and sculptor in 2013.
Four of LaCroix’s paintings are featured in a new juried exhibition at The Mansion at Strathmore in North Bethesda. Two of them were created during the global pandemic.
“My paintings express what is in my heart at that time,” LaCroix told Forest Hills Connection. “Often the subject matter is there at the edge of my brain when I wake in the morning.”
Sometimes, LaCroix says, she is on “a search for beauty.” Her 2017 painting If I Could Only Grasp The Sky, one of the works selected by Strathmore, is an example of that. Lacroix explains that beauty in this case is defined not just as a visual trait “but also as a spiritual quest, an aspiration to reach beyond one’s boundaries, whether personally or societally imposed.”
If I Could Only Grasp the Sky (2018, oil on canvas)
Other works on display at the Strathmore gallery reflect LaCroix’s anger and dismay at injustice.
Undercurrent represents “the near constant underlying fact in women’s lives throughout the world of the threat of sexual violence, sexual harassment, sexual trafficking, and sexual predation in all fields of their endeavor, whether being part of the military, seeking an education, or working outside and inside the home.”
Undercurrent (2018, oil on canvas)
The final two are Covid-19 works. “Discarded Lives responds to the sheer negligence (to put it mildly) of our nation’s response to the onslaught of Covid and the needless deaths of many, including health care workers, as a consequence,” LaCroix said.
Discarded Lives (2020, oil on board)
And Not All Survived (March 2021, not pictured here) is “a reminder of that consequence as I had hope that the pandemic was being conquered. That hope is waning a little right now.”
The “Touch” exhibition runs from September 8th through October 30th, 2021 at The Mansion at Strathmore (10701 Rockville Pike, North Bethesda, Maryland). The gallery is open Wednesday-Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. There’s an opening reception on September 9th from 7 to 9 p.m.
The artist also invites people to view her work at dcclacroix.com and by appointment at LaCroix Studio Gallery.
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