Opening Reception: Friday, November 11, 6 – 8 pm

Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present new works by Lois Chiles.  This will be the first solo exhibition for the artist at Octavia Art Gallery in Houston.

Lois Chiles’ recent paintings are focused on the natural representation of the human form in a way that is simultaneously classic and modern. Many artists inspire Chiles, including John Singer Sargent, Robert Henri, and George Bellows as well as Vigee Le Brun, Berte Morisot, and Marie Cassatt. The beautiful colors and rhythms of the human form are of interest to Chiles as well as the bravery and innocence of each girl willing to disrobe in front of a stranger, presenting herself in a unique way in order to be immortalized on canvas. For Chiles, painting is an extension of her earlier work as an actress, studying faces and behavior, looking for the story they tell, and hoping to reveal an inner truth.  In celebrating women, Chiles creates the illusion of contour, volume, dimension and form on the flat surface of a board or canvas, and then captures the subtle changes of color darting across a face or body.   In the light and shadows, Chiles hopes to reveal the essence and interior life of each woman she paints.

Born in Houston, Texas, Lois Chiles convinced her parents to let her go to New York for her senior year in college.  There she was discovered by GLAMOUR Magazine and began modeling. While modeling, Lois studied acting and was cast in such films as The Way We Were, The Great Gatsby, Death On The Nile, Broadcast News, and the Bond film, Moonraker. In the mid 80’s, living in California, Lois was asked to join a life drawing group led by costume designer, Theadora Van Runkel. There she began drawing the human form. In the mid 90's Lois began working with Laddie John Dill, one of the California Abstract Expressionists, in his life drawing class for Cal Arts. In 2002 Lois met her future husband, Richard Gilder, in Maine, and in 2005 they married and she moved to New York City where he lives. Wanting to learn to paint, Lois enrolled in classes at the National Academy of Fine Arts, studying with Cornelia Foss and later Gabriela Dellosso. In the winters in New York she paints nudes and portraits and in the summers in Maine she paints landscapes, studying with landscape painters T. Allen Lawson and Deborah Paris. In 2013 Lois began private instruction in New York with Kyeong Kuen No.