Brown Owls

Ayse Wilson

Ayse Wilson’s paintings and works on paper explore childhood experiences, nostalgia, and the unsettling transition from infancy to adolescence and adulthood. Inspired by found images, as well as her imagination, Wilson paints children with stylized, doll-like faces and dark pools for eyes, set against monochromatic backgrounds and seemingly suspended between states of innocence and experience. In T-Rex (2012) a little girl in a pink dress and cap with a blank expression on her face stands in a dark, featureless space, holding a stuffed T-Rex. Wilson trained as a classical painter in Florence and worked as an assistant to Jeff Koons.