Exhibitions

AMERICAN DIVERSITY: HOMAGE TO GRANT WOOD

David Lusk Gallery (Nashville) / 516 Hagan St. May 28, 2019 - June 29, 2019

Beth Foley

Foley returns to David Lusk Gallery Nashville for her second solo show. Known for her realist style, Foley paints an assortment of paired characters who modernize Grant Wood’s American Gothic. 

“I’ve always loved Grant Wood,” says the artist. “When I was in art school everyone made fun of him. Then I moved to San Francisco, and went to his show and I felt so validated. I love people and painting people. For this show I started looking for couples that represent America now.”

Foley’s paintings have long referenced art history greats, particularly Wood. Her works look as though they were painted from photographs, and Foley acknowledges that she does work from old photos, as well as images culled from the Internet. She also hires models and takes her own photos. 

The subjects in Foley’s most recent body of work, American Diversity, range from people she stopped on the street to photograph to friends she asked to pose. Jewish American Gothic pays tribute to her ancestors while Muslim American Gothic livens up Wood’s painting, satirizing the original tongue-in-cheek painting. 

Foley lives and works in Nashville, where she has lived with her family since 1998. After graduating from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, she moved to San Francisco where she exhibited with Joseph Chowning Gallery. She lived in New York for three years before moving to Nashville. She has shown at multiple galleries in Nashville, including David Lusk Gallery and Zeitgeist Gallery, as well as exhibited at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. In 2016 she was awarded a grant from the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.