Anthony Vega

Neon Paintings

Reprieve/Contact Lucidity (#neon paintings)
 
Turns out during the pandemic lots of us turned to “comfort foods”. I know I did. 
 
I also did a lot of Twitter scrolling. This small series of paintings is borrowed from some text and a tweet I saw by Jerry Saltz. Jerry was writing about the Cezanne drawing show and referred to the work as providing a type of contact lucidity. A reworking of a quote from “A Scanner Darkly” by Phillip K. Dick; "He wondered how much of the insanity of the day--his insanity--had been real, or just induced as a contact lunacy, by the situation."
 
Jerry was thinking, quite nicely, that Cezanne provides a type of awareness, and clarity of our world through his work. I really want to hold onto that sentiment; but can’t. 
 
I’m just not sure a type of lucidity can exist in 2021. And if we could find it, it would be rather fleeting. I got to thinking about those things that “ground” us, or things that provide us pleasure or a kind of escape. Maybe not lucidity, but a break from the lunacy, or maybe its just more lunacy?
 
I turned to TikTok and then YouTube. 
 
Turns out there are lots of people making paintings online. Folks making very different work than mine, for vastly different reasons than me. I thought I would look at one of the more popular methods emulated, “neon” painting. This is where you use a kind of technique to make lines in a painting look like they are made of neon light. So I made these.
 
These are “neon” paintings of comfort foods.

"Neon" Paintings

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