Affirming Difference

Selma Parlour

London-based artist Selma Parlour conceives of painting as a two-dimensional stage space that curtails fictive distance as it represents it. Her paintings are meticulously rendered through transparent films of oil paint on linen. There are no visible traces of her technique, instead her delicate surfaces appear as though drawn or printed. The literal transparency of colour in her works borrows from the white primer beneath, as if lit from behind. As this backlit quality is reminiscent of the screen, we are reminded of painting’s social function as a window to another world, one penetrable only with our eyes.