Description
‘Dressed up in Dreams’ by Taryn Riley
Artist: Taryn Riley
Title: ‘Dressed up in Dreams’
Medium: Oil on paper
Dimensions: 14″ x 11″
Framing: Unframed
Year of Creation: 2025
Artwork Will Ship From: USA
About the Artwork:
Both of my paintings in this exhibition were born from a lifelong fascination with cicadas. The first time that I recall Brood X emerging (one of 15 broods of periodical cicadas that appear regularly throughout the eastern US) was the springtime of my 10th grade year. Every 17 years, Brood X cicada nymphs tunnel upwards to emerge from the surface of the ground. Something about this creature silently living underground, underneath all of us — oblivious to all of the nonsense above was fascinating to me.
Once they come up, they shed their exoskeletons, thus becoming adults… littering their little, ghostly husks everywhere. The mature cicadas fly, mate, lay eggs, and then die within several weeks. Their whole time on the surface is a fleeting, dizzying cacophony in the sun — punctuated by their famously loud, persistent humming.
Sometimes I forget about them for months, even years … but something inevitably reminds me of their presence. Underground. Unchanged. Waiting to emerge. I calculate in my head how long it’s been… how old was I last time…? How old will I be? Will I still be here?
For me, they are a metaphor, a way of wrapping my head around the relentless passage of time. They are a gnawing, terrifying, beautiful reminder of something so much bigger than us. – Taryn Riley
About the Artist:
(Artist Bio)
Taryn Riley (b. 1988, Arlington, VA) lives and works in Palmetto, FL. She studied painting at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) and art education at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).
Taryn’s paintings explore her grasp on identity and perception. A fascination with the loaded language of femininity through symbols and objects is pervasive throughout.
Saturated colors are used to articulate mood and serve as a silently suggestive element. The same blood red that serves to depict a wound is used to rouge a cheek, weaving an element of uneasy beauty throughout her work.