Where to Brows… with Nieves González

If you’re not familiar with Nieves González’s work, you already are. In fact, go ahead and put on “Pussy Palace” by Lily Allen to accompany this reading. We’ll wait.

The image you’ll see when you press play—Allen’s baby bangs fringing her forehead, a blue polka-dotted Miu Miu puffer worn like a coat of armor—is a painting by González, commissioned as the cover for Allen’s latest album, West End Girl. Allen stares out at the viewer, her cutting cheekbones a visual cue to the album’s themes, which recount with brutal candor her husband’s affair. Allen’s choice of González is a compelling match. An artist who brings new life to her subjects through fashionable restraint is a fitting collaborator for a sitter in search of a new beginning.

González, a Spanish artist known for classical oil portraits inspired by Baroque iconography, often modernizes tradition with glossy puffer jackets that fill her canvases from edge to edge. Her recent exhibition Sacred Hair / Capelli Sacri, on view at T293 in Rome (and upcoming show at Richard Heller Gallery), lays bare the inner workings of her practice: three-quarter faces with cherubed, rouged cheeks, ensconced in flowing locks that cascade down her figures like melting water. While deeply rooted in art historical precedent, González’s work asks viewers to question what it means to inherit visual language—particularly in a world where what we see, and how we interpret it, is constantly shaped by distortions of perception.