VICKIE BYRON

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Inspired by views along the J train between Brooklyn and Queens, Vickie Byron paints the city’s geometric understructures, its subways, roadways, and bridges, embedding text in the painted architecture of the city in an expression of its culture and social history. Byron’s paintings are filmstrip-like frames, fast moving compositions that capture the speed and rhythms of New York City. She lays down tracks in compositions with openings and barriers that frame the urban environment, splitting it into regular intervals that mark progression through time. Recurring elements include tracks, platforms, I-beams, fences, playing cards, signs, and cars. The city provides socio-political warnings and titles for my paintings—Watch the Gap, Keep Out, and Turn Left. Depictions of movement, empty hands, deserted neighborhoods, and ever-waiting figures combine with industrial and classical architecture to portray time, transition, and isolation documenting a 21st-century city in flux. 

Bio 

Vickie Byron is a NYC artist based in Queens who paints figurative and urban subjects. She has a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in Painting from Queens College, City University of New York. Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited in galleries and museums across the country including the Queens Museum of Art, All Street Gallery, Atlantic Gallery, Local Project gallery, Jamaica Center for Arts, the New York Hall of Science, Queens College CUNY, and Flushing Council on the Arts. She is the author of the poetry chapbook, Watered Down, Finishing Line Press, and has been the featured poet in numerous reading series in NYC. She also taught art in New York City public schools.