Var Gallery is excited to announce the opening of “Despite All My Rage”, our first solo exhibition of new works from Lindsey Yeager at Var’s 5th Street location. Yeager takes her hard-edge, illustrative paintings to a new level and offers personal reflections on grief, dealing with change, and the need for connection considering the chaos of the natural world.

 

Drawing on her background as an illustrator, Yeager’s works are highly metaphorical. Symbols of medieval weapons and Midwestern barn quilts reference the conditions which often frame the central scene and provide questions on how to survive with and against each other. An excerpt from Yeager’s artist statement complements the narrative paintings: 

 

“The domestic world isn’t made for me, much in the same way that a highway bisects a migratory corridor, threatened in ways I don’t even understand. I saw a Dodge Charger smoke a deer so hard that one of her legs came off her body, her friends overlooking the scene from afar. She waits for the dermestids and spores and crows to return her, bit by bit, back to the earth. I’m her and I’m her companions and I’m the surrounding grass and the pavement and I might also be the guy in the car. Do fungi experience rich inner lives? Their baseline fear level is probably better than a deer’s but they probably do somehow feel the faceted turmoil of being alive. I simultaneously know a devastating amount and nothing at all.”

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The work is deeply personal, but it is not individualistic. Yeager reaches for connection and takes care to see our interdependence. When one seed may stem into a bold and beautiful bloom, its roots reach back and intertwine with a neighboring seedling. But when carelessness creeps in, one seed may start to grow, wrap its stem around another and result in a chokehold.

 

While despair may be omnipresent and all consuming, "Despite All My Rage" affirms that it’s okay. Yeager permits the tough reality of her present moment, allows the depth of raw emotions to take over, and in doing so turns to welcome the desire for a slow, peaceful future – a future where the constant threat of what’s to come is replaced by great gentleness for what is. A future where our collective decay can be embraced and felt together in earnest.

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About the Artist

 

Fueled by a need to find closure in a deteriorating world, Wisconsin-born Colorado transplant Lindsey Yeager paints and illustrates connections between society and nature, between human and animal, translating and reframing human contexts into fearful, raw, and feral allegories. Lindsey received a BFA in New Studio Practice and Illustration from Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in 2021 and she went on to win two Society of Illustrators awards and participate in the 2021-22 cycle of Plum Blossom Initiative’s Bridge Work residency. Her work has been shown at Var Gallery in Milwaukee, WI, Mana Contemporary in Chicago, IL, Soft Times Gallery in San Francisco, CA, Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, WI, and Society of Illustrators in Manhattan, NY, among others. She has taught at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh, and Anderson Ranch Arts Center.

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