Queen of the Liminal is the latest body of work by Jessica Simone O’Dowd (Ravenous Art), presented at Hive Gallery’s February 2024 series of ongoing shows in Downtown Los Angeles, ‘Rising Stars’.

Eight new paintings explore the central figure’s journey through varying states of liminality. Hers is a process of individuation excavated by memories of spaces, emotions and remnants of relationships. O’Dowd uses expressionist language (influenced by the works of Egon Schiele, Remedios Varo, and Francis Bacon) to depict the surreal and often confusing period of growth that we experience in these places of in-between. Brushstrokes that evoke the fluidity of nature–the ocean currents, tendrils of smoke and flames, dancing waves of light–form celestial bodies, like that of a goddess of creation, wrath, and pure elemental energy.

Liminal spaces are often represented by doors, hallways, bridges–architecture that symbolizes a state of transition from one place to the next.  By contrast, O’Dowd’s work explores liminality through the cryptic lens of the emotional interior.  Ethereal shapes and dreamlike settings soaked in swirls of color (reminiscent of a Dali-esque palette) depict a person whose individual landscape questions the absoluteness of the exterior world. The motif of the saw blade sun, at once nourishing but potentially lethal, saturates the sky above in one moment and occupies the expanse of our heroine's heart in another. This symbolic tethering and untethering of the sun speaks to relentless realities being called out to you in the harsh light of day.  

Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy and I Hear You are two pieces that distinctly abstract the idea of liminal spaces from the physical plane. Suspended bodies are encompassed by electric pulses of an ECG and the colliding oscillations of sound waves, foregrounding the obscured and implied shape of a boy-like figure and a human ear. The presence of this figure in such a surreal phase of the heroine’s transformation suggests a state of liminality in the context of interpersonal relationships. When connection loses its footing, what anchors are left to ground those emotions? It is as if one is suspended in the translational gap between the impulse of feelings and the suddenly limited language we have to convey them.

“As I actualize this show, a new body of work, a new way of looking at my creativity, I have come to a greater cognizance about my visual language.  Having a fascination for strikingly liminal spaces - slightly opened doors, cascading waters, empty buildings in a state of construct or disrepair against a scarce skyline, alluding to a simplicity and a discernible silence - the more significant expression is for the feelings of liminality that fill these spaces.  An instinctive sense of both change and vacancy.   The transitional vastness of smoke, water, dust….”  - O’Dowd, peels apart these physical environments and explores the psychology of space, time, dreams, and human connection in her work.

 -    Eden Evans