Springfield artist Priya N. Green (American, born 1986) uses painting to grapple with the human condition, exploring concepts such as how we see and understand the world. She often uses found images and film stills as source material for her paintings.
Green’s most recent body of work, which she started while spending time at home in the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic, draws on her experience of absorbing news and information through electronic devices and screens. The works on view, made between 2020 and 2022, address a central concern of the information age: how do we experience current events from a distance, or second-hand, through the filtered deluge of still and moving images? “We live in this age where we feel overwhelmed by information, constantly inundated,” explains Green, “yet we still have a limited understanding of reality.” In Green’s layered paintings, scenes from the news are blurred, abstracted, and interrupted by lines and forms that represent the inevitable gaps in modern communication. For the artist, painting offers an opportunity to study, and rest in, an uncertain space where image and artifice intersect. Often bathed in blue light, Green’s works use a combination of realism and abstraction to ask important questions about the complexities of information and experience in a world that is increasingly filled with screens.
Priya N. Green (born 1986) is an artist whose paintings explore found imagery and the human condition. She received a BFA from Rutgers University and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Green has shown her work internationally at spaces including the Jersey City Museum, University Museum of Contemporary Art, Zimmerli Art Museum, the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, and Cuchifritos Gallery. She is a recipient of the international Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant as well as a fellowship from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Green lives and works in Springfield, Massachusetts.
