Lauren Schiller

Gallery Affiliations: Freight + Volume

Region: Northeast

Website: http://www.laurenschiller.com

City / State: Middletown, NJ

The imagery in my work is drawn from food-related memories, associations and rituals. Depictions of food are cross-referenced with personalities, places and events. These images are not illustrations, but rather are inspired by particular eating habits. Themes include food and morality (gluttony vs. abstinence, denial and restriction) and food and identity (personal, cultural, familial). Recent paintings have also focused the religious significance of food, inspired by stories about medieval women mystics and their relationship to fasting. My prints and paintings are infused with what I hope is subtle humor and social commentary. To quote Bill Buford, "I've often thought that food is a concentrated messenger of a culture, compacted in the necessity of our having to eat to survive."