DAVID GIBSON WRITING

The role of the symbol in art is not only as some semiotic tool, nor is it like a mythical creature, but it is instead, and rather conclusively, an object or scenario emerging out of daily life, something which magnifies (and clarifies) the meaning of everything upon which it touches, even in the most mundane circumstance. In the opening pages of his novel “Immortality,” Milan Kundera speaks of the nature of a gesture: “A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person's instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations.” The paintings of Marcy Brafman can be considered empathic gestures. They deal with situations which are inherently symbolic, sometimes taking on the symbol as an icon, and sometimes mining it for its humanistic traits mired in