The photorealism of Cindy Wright's large-scale portraits and still life paintings can often (perhaps ironically) bleed into abstraction. From a distance, her monumental paintings display snapshot characteristics, like cropped composition and intense single source lighting. However, upon closer inspection, the range of mark making and painterly application becomes astoundingly apparent. The paintings become a perceptual conundrum as an easily recognizable object dissolves into nonrepresentational shapes and brush strokes. Similarly, Wright’s juxtaposition of alluring mimesis and the subtly grotesque alludes to the intricate relationship woven between life and death, latent and manifest. They are conceptually rooted within an artistic tradition that forces the viewer to question the nature of how we read and understand the world, and they yet remain entirely contemporary in their technique. Her subjects are taken from her immediate milieu and are transformed into iconic meditations on our own mortality.