In the painterly world that Devorah Jacoby creates on canvas, dichotomies coexist with a quiet psychological power – chaos and calm, violence and tranquility, domesticity and adventure, freedom and danger. Jacoby’s paintings are fearless, both in content and execution. She lays bare the multiple layers of human interaction and explores the duality between the need to belong and the longing to be separate. She is capable of carefully articulating details like facial expressions in one area of the canvas while operating in long free strokes of the brush and exposed underpainting in another.

It has been three years since Jacoby’s last exhibition and the time has been well spent. The paintings are powerful. Paintings like Hide/Seek challenge the viewers and yet they relate to it on some deep unconscious level. A blindfolded, clearly beautiful woman stands in pointy dress shoes. Her legs are at once both straight and splayed and painted wings come from her shoulders. The painting is dark and sensual with red underpainting shining through the deep surface. A gold sequined feather rises from the blindfold like an ornament on a fashionable hat. There is clearly a reference to sexuality both as something to move toward and away from. The painting is a psychological portrait of the moment of choice between intimacy and privacy. There is no right answer.

The title of the exhibition “Mysterious Barricades”, references an 18th century harpsichord composition by François Couperin. The title has been the subject of much debate and conjecture in the nearly 300 years since its composition with no interpretation being finally accepted as correct. It seems a fitting title for Jacoby’s work. In her own words, “Life is beautiful. It’s amazing. And it is also scary and ugly and hideous and unfair.”