Written By: Oliver Heffron

Sometimes, when you enter an art show, it can take a few minutes to appreciate the craft and deliberation of the artist. Other times, it’s more immediate. From the first step into Beshert: Beholden, LA-based painter Hannah Lupton Reinhard’s first solo exhibition at Seasons LA, the viewer confronts an overwhelming technical mastery and spectacular imagination. Radiant spring colors and dazzling gems leap from the walls, commanding attention to eerily accurate shreds of glass, uncanny ripples of skin, painstakingly detailed expressions containing complex emotions towards the audience. Imagining Jewish feminity through a fantastic filtration of art history, Lupton Reinhard’s paintings depict moments of feminine compassion and protective sisterhood: postures of women shielding and sheltering each other with touching chemistry and burdensome understandings. The motif of seeking shade repeats through silk veils, scarves and trees, eliciting the religious imagery the shrouding of Leah, the masquerade of Esther, and the baskey of Moses. Impressive from the first moment, Beshert: Beholden is a compelling introduction to the talented vision of Hannah Lupton Reinhard, and it only gets better when you give it a few minutes to sink in.

Lupton Reinhard applies oil paint like watercolors, utilizing thin transparent layers with minimal pigment. She then scrapes the paint in a cross-hatched drawing mode, creating a soaked, glassy coloration and a rigid, mechanical edge. This process creates paintings that pulsate with color while retaining a translucent delicacy, fitting the precise physicality of her subjects on a canvas transformed to stained-glass through technique. She then bedazzles particular objects like tree trunks, scarves, or butterflies with Swarovski crystals, adding a tactile nostalgia and levity that contrasts the stringency of the painting technique. This contrasts rigorous technique with glitzy colors and gems to create a subversive tension between the real and unreal and muddle the waters between naivety and sophistication. 

The style of synagogue decor, the center of the show is an altarpiece triptych: one massive landscape painting utilizing biblical imagery to portray a fantastic, tambourine-shaking feminine celebration, Song of the Sea, flanked by two stain-glass portraits of women offering the audience objects which reflect the contemporary religious influences in the world: a candle in Blessing One and a wine-bag in Blessing Two. In another confrontation with biblical inspiration, Kiss of Judas depicts the vulnerable moment before an embrace between two women with dueling expressions sharing one branch of support, the bedazzled bark becoming a sturdy support beam beckoning the viewer’s touch. We Are Closer to the Sky offers another depiction of intimate companionship in a shady yet perilous suspension against the limb of a tree, the intense stare of the checker-dressed woman seeming to bear the burden of the viewer’s gaze in order to shield the other. 

The embracing subjects of I Saw Butterflies All Week acknowledge the viewer from picturesque rolling green hills as their hair dances in the wind like orange ribbons and butterflies dance at the edges of the frame. Sleek blue shimmers rain down through the slits of the trees on a moment of curious spirituality in Are You There? The borders between real and unreal strike suddenly in After the Song, where the foreground’s fantasy realm of orange sherbert star-spangled banners meets the meticulously realistic depiction of the forest in the background. The pond’s surface opens a portal into the real world with its digital-quality reflection. 

While the bright colors, festive content, and glamorous features catch the eye immediately, it’s Lupton Reinhard’s masterful technique that keeps the viewer lingering in each work’s presence, eventually feeling the aching melancholy which, like the veils and leaves, shields itself within the technical virtuosity of each piece. Hannah Lupton Reinhard’s Beshert: Beholden will be up Wed-Sat, 12-6 PM, January 14-20, at Seasons LA (908 S. Olive St, Los Angeles, CA 90015).