Our lives are an amalgam of ordinary moments and significant events. Interior Lives, an exhibition featuring works by up-and-coming local artist Sydney Vernon at Philips@THEARC captures the subtleties and complexities of these experiences. Vernon was invited by Philips@THEARC to showcase her works in dialogue with Bonnard's World, a retrospective of Pierre Bonnard's body of work at the Phillips Collection. 

This collaboration with Vernon is particularly fitting given her exposure to Bonnard’s work during her formative years and her ties to the area. The exhibition at Philips@THEARC is part of a wider initiative between The Phillips Collection and its partners to extend programs to communities and foster collaboration with local artists.

Interior Lives features six of Vernon's drawings on paper, two in black and white and the rest in color. The artwork that drew me right in is Prinita in Park Slope Apt. It depicts a woman enjoying a cigarette by the window, her eyes closed in bliss. A loosely drawn curtain hangs over the window sill, framed by leaves from a nearby potted plant. 

Although it's a simple pencil sketch, it deftly conveys the essence of the fleeting moment, making it a striking piece. There is a sense we are privy to a glimpse because Vernon has captured it on paper. The paper's serrated edge accentuates the moment's brevity, almost as if the scene has been ripped from a snapshot of someone else's life. The loose and fluid style of the drawing is ideally suited to the paper medium.

As a newcomer to Vernon's work, I was curious about her choice of drawing as her primary medium over more traditional ones like paint. Vernon explained that paper is more accessible and conducive to jotting down ideas. She noted, "I can be on the train with my sketchbook and quickly sketch out an idea." The immediacy of paper aligns well with her rapid and spontaneous creative process; she tends not to plan or overthink how a piece will unfold once she starts working on it.

It would be remiss to assume Vernon's artistry revolves solely around elevating mundane moments to studies of contemplation. A native of Prince George's County, Sydney Vernon studied Fine Arts at The Cooper Union in New York City. Vernon's artistic practice involves overlaying family photographs with imagined histories and futures to create forms with new meanings.

This fusion of history and memory holds deep significance when viewed through the lived experience of Black people in America. This shared history is characterized by resilience and the triumph of the human spirit. Vernon desires for her art to reflect this spirit. She observed that each generation of her family was marking new milestones, surpassing the dreams of their predecessors, who often contended with a limiting socio-economic environment. Vernon's approach to overlaying her images goes beyond a mere poetic reconstruction of her ancestors' imagined lives. It becomes a powerful tool for consciously framing her world, transforming her art into a medium for personal and cultural expression.

Coastal Ride, a charcoal drawing on paper, features the artist's aunt on a motorcycle, her smile visible beneath her sunglasses. The charcoal medium adds texture to the work. The composition, with the aunt against a vast landscape, evokes a sense of freedom and possibility. This piece is not just about the joy of engaging in a hobby but also a testament to the private moments of human life. Like Vernon's other works, Coastal Ride exalts the beauty of everyday Black lives, in stark contrast to the tragic depictions and stereotypes often perpetuated in the media. 

Continuing the theme of intimate moments is the artwork Vacation, created with pastel and silkscreen on paper. Using a family vacation photograph as source material, the artist overlays an urban landscape with an imagined bridge. Her mother, wearing a sky-blue swimsuit, stands waist-deep in swirling waters of turquoise and blue. Her eyes are half closed as she enjoys the moment. Against a backdrop of vivid green mountains is a sky bursting with bold red, white, and yellow patches. The artist takes a similar approach in Hide and Seek, another drawing portraying the artist's mother in the family living room against a purple, yellow, and blue background, framed to the right by green foliage. 

Both artworks, Vacation and Hide and Seek, stand out not only for their bright colors but also because of their familiar portrayals of objects in unfamiliar tones, equipping the viewer with new ways to see. More importantly, color also serves as a channel for expressing human emotions, reminiscent of the intense feelings conveyed in Mark Rothko's 1950s paintings, with their horizontal bands of color. Vernon's artworks are influenced by the post-impressionist French artist Pierre Bonnard. There are the brightly saturated colors, how Vernon frames her scenes with plants, and the portrayal of intimate moments.

Vernon takes Bonnard's technique of using color to obscure his subject matter and takes it in a new direction by revealing their facial expressions, making a powerful statement about her subjects’ inner worlds. Often, societal perceptions overshadow the true essence of black individuals, treating their bodies as a filter through which to view them. Vernon's artworks envision a world where Black individuals' full expressions and inner emotions take prominence.

Finally, we come to the pivotal events of life in The Real Strange Thing, rendered with pastel on paper. The artwork depicts the artist's parents in a slow dance on their wedding day, dressed in white attire. The chief bridesmaid and best man are positioned to the right, clothed in shades of magenta and gray, respectively. A crowd of onlookers, faces devoid of expression, fill the wedding hall in hues of reddish-pink and bluish-gray. The artist's mother, gazing at the viewer, holds our attention. 

Conversations with Vernon and her mother revealed that the bride's face in the drawing is that of her mother in the present. In The Real Strange Thing, the artist tackles themes of past regrets and the enduring consequences of choices. The artwork recalls past events and meditates on the textures of memories and their varying interpretations by individuals. In this piece, the artist journeys across time and space to her parent's wedding, bearing witness to that day's hopes and possible fears.

A central message for visitors to the exhibition is the reminder that there is beauty in celebrating both the simple and the momentous. To truly see others, we must peel back the layers that obscure our perceptions to appreciate the richness beneath their lives.

The Sydney Vernon's Interior Lives exhibition at Philips@THEARC runs through June 6th, 2024. Admission is free.

Oluseyi Akinyode is a Day Eight arts writing fellow, who grew up in the bustling city of Lagos and now calls DC home. She holds an undergraduate degree in Finance from New York University. She is a 2024 recipient of the HumanitiesDC grant.