Shiver is a twilight encounter with selfhood, where memory, myth, and nature dissolve into the sublime.
Andrea Festa presents Shiver, the first solo exhibition in Italy by Lauryn (Red) Welch, featuring 12 oil and cyanotype paintings that explore the boundaries between perception, vulnerability, and transformation. Rooted in nocturnal landscapes and personal mythology, Welch’s work invites viewers into a cinematic and dreamlike space where the self meets the natural world in liminal, emotionally charged moments. Drawing on folklore, literature, and atmospheric storytelling, Shiver unfolds between light and shadow, presence and disappearance.
At the core of Shiver is a sense of liminality—those subtle, uncertain states between night and dawn, presence and absence, the seen and the felt. Welch’s paintings dwell in this threshold space, unfolding narrative scenes with haunting atmosphere and rich emotional nuance. Her work captures moments that feel suspended in time, like half-remembered dreams or myths whispered in the dark. Guided by recurring imagery—twilight skies, spectral forms, birds in flight, and walking figures—Shiver weaves references from New England and Balkan folklore, cinema, and literature into deeply personal visual poems.
The exhibition’s title evokes both the physical sensation of cold and the emotional tremor of recognition. Welch’s distinctive use of cyanotype, an alternative photographic printing process, merges with layers of oil paint, creating surfaces that shift with the viewer’s gaze. These pieces are simultaneously grounded and ephemeral—sun-exposed skeletons of imagery that shimmer and vanish, mirroring the transient nature of memory and perception.
From the mysterious figure of Red Walker, who traverses the narrative nightscapes, to the ghostly embodiment of illness in Vrykolakas, Welch’s paintings function like diaristic film stills, recalling the surreal tension of David Lynch’s work while remaining rooted in a painterly tradition of psychological storytelling. Her practice merges light, color, and metaphor to create a deeply intimate space where emotional vulnerability is held and transformed.
Lauryn (Red) Welch holds an MFA from CUNY Hunter College (2023) and a BFA from SUNY Purchase College (2015). Her work has been widely exhibited across the U.S. and internationally, including shows at Half Gallery in New York, PM/AM in London, and The Ranch in Montauk. Her paintings have been featured in Hyperallergic, New American Paintings, and The New York Times, and are included in prestigious private collections such as The Green Family Foundation and the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection.
