TIME OUT NY

Goff + Rosenthal

These lyrical paintings of the American dream in the summertime are less cavalier than they look. The series began when Isca Greenfield-Sanders purchased a slide archive from the 1960s on eBay last year-scenes of a family lounging at the beach or by a backyard pool. She scanned the slides and re-worked digital prints of the images with watercolor and pencil; she then enlarged those images, affixed them to canvas and painted over them completely to produce works that look like fashionable blurred spots from a lifestyle magazine.

In Bright Beach, a family settles in for a day at the seaside, shading themselves under a striped umbrella. Three Boys, a painting of children playing at the edge of the surf is the quintessential picture of a perfect day at the beach. Despite its title, Coney Island doesn’t depict crowds or a carousel; instead, it shows a nattily dressed group straight out of a ‘50s fashion show. In Orange Suit Bather, a woman perches on a poolside ladder, trailing her legs in the water, surrounded by an orderly picket fence, a lush green forest and sun-dappled water. Red Suit Diver is equally pristine in its portrayal of a family enjoying a lazy poolside moment.

Greenfield-Sanders’s paintings lack the glamour of David Hockney’s pools or the edgy emptiness of Fairfield Porter’s summer in the Hamptons (two obvious points of comparison). What they do convey, despite their labor-intensive process, is the carefree contentment of a hot summer’s day.

-Bridget L. Goodbody

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