Oklahoma City-based painter Brandi Twilley presents her latest exhibition, Crest Foods, at Sargent’s Daughters, showcasing a compelling series of over forty small-scale oil paintings. This body of work, Twilley’s fourth solo presentation with the gallery, delves into her personal history, documenting and reinterpreting her experiences working at Crest Foods, a local grocery store chain in Oklahoma. Through intimate brushstrokes and poignant compositions, Twilley’s paintings reveal the often-harsh realities of working-class existence, while simultaneously capturing moments of unexpected beauty and resilience that emerge from everyday life.
The genesis of Crest Foods lies in Twilley’s return to Oklahoma City in 2003 after leaving college in Boston to cope with depression and insomnia. Following a devastating fire at her family’s rural home, the second such tragedy to befall her family, they relocated to Midwest City. Seeking stability and routine, Twilley took a job as a cleaner at the local Crest Foods grocery store, a place where her three brothers would also later find employment. Reflecting on this formative period, Twilley recalls, “At 7 a.m. I cleaned the bathrooms and then swept and mopped the aisles of the store. The best part was that I was left alone, working and thinking without any interruptions. As a result I had time to observe and contemplate those around me, my coworkers and the customers. I was moved by the way their hard lives showed in their faces and bodies.” During this period of quiet observation, Twilley began sketching the environment of Crest Foods, capturing images of her brothers, coworkers, and the quotidian scenes unfolding around her.
These initial sketches became the foundation for the paintings in Crest Foods. Years later, while living in New York in 2020, Twilley revisited these early drawings and began to develop them into the current body of work. However, her artistic process was once again intertwined with personal challenges. Contracting Lyme disease, Twilley returned to Oklahoma to recover, bringing her unfinished paintings with her. In a twist of fate, her convalescence took place in close proximity to Crest Foods once more. For Twilley, this cyclical return and engagement with the subject matter has transformed Crest Foods into a powerful medium for exploring themes of loss and renewal that resonate throughout her life. The exhibition itself marks a significant moment of recovery and re-emergence for the artist, mirroring the themes of resilience depicted in her work.
Twilley’s mastery of oil paint is evident in the diverse emotional range conveyed within Crest Foods. Her paintings oscillate between darkly humorous observations, moments of unexpected beauty, and scenes of haunting sparseness. Expansive skies, imbued with the colors of sunset, transform mundane parking lots into spaces for contemplation. Sensitive portraits, often based on memory and invention, capture the lived experiences etched onto the faces of her coworkers at Crest Foods. These are not mere copies of reality, but rather emotional renderings that evoke the challenges and dignity of working lives. Echoing her previous series depicting family fires, these portraits are imbued with a sense of remembered experience rather than straightforward representation. Each painting, seemingly a fleeting snapshot of a moment, is carefully constructed through Twilley’s artistic gaze. Yet, even in depictions of everyday objects like price tags and a cleaner’s cart, her delicate brushwork imparts an ethereal luminosity. The layers of oil paint become analogous to layers of memory, preserving and simultaneously transforming the realities of her time at Crest Foods. Crest Foods invites viewers to experience the past through Twilley’s present perspective, a perspective shaped by both hardship and healing, offering a poignant reflection on working-class life in America.
Brandi Twilley (b. 1982, Oklahoma City, OK) continues to live and work in her hometown. Her work has been recently featured in exhibitions at Charles Moffett (New York, NY), Josh Lilley (London, UK), Zero Gallery (Milan, Italy), Kate Werble Gallery (New York, NY), and The Museum of Sex (New York, NY). She has garnered critical attention from prominent art publications including The New York Times, ARTFORUM, ARTnews, The Art Newspaper, The New Yorker, Artnet News, Time Out, The Observer, and Hyperallergic. Twilley received her MFA from Yale University in 2011 and is represented by Sargent’s Daughters, with Crest Foods marking her fourth solo exhibition with the New York gallery.
Press Coverage:
FRIEZE Review – September 20, 2023
Filthy Dreams Review – September 20, 2023
The New York Sun Article – September 15, 2023
