John Winship paintings at F.A.N. Gallery

John Winship's new exhibition of 29 paintings takes an object that was once so commonplace as to be overlooked— the snapshot— and uses it as a springboard for a haunting tour down memory lane.

As I understand it, these images are not Winship family photographs, but rather found objects that the artist has acquired during his travels. He does a monochrome underpainting of the photographed image, then overpaints with layers of muted colors. What results is an image that's ever-so-blurred, like an out-of-focus snapshot, but retaining the awkward, "found" quality of an image snapped by an amateur picture-taker.

"Dream-like" is an overused term, but I find that I must trot it out once again, because it is the most apt description of a work like Breakdown (a woman standing forlornly by her ailing auto) or Three Women at a Table (shown not at the ground-level perspective you'd expect, but rather as a bird's eye view from above). The technique is equally effective with smaller works like Man in a Wilderness or Man In Front of a Tree.

This much having been said, the question becomes: Is there a payoff to all this technique?

Well, the paintings undoubtedly conjure up a sense of nostalgia, of times gone by. I think that you enjoy this show in proportion to your feeling about nostalgia. If you love to reminisce, then this is your show. If you want action, impact, then you might find it an unprofitable viewing experience. If Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons is your type of film, then Winship will be your type of artist.

What's universal about the show is Winship's fondness for old photographs— the sort of things you find stuffed in a box by the cash register in a used bookstore. I sometimes buy them myself. You don't exactly know what their appeal is. Maybe a face is winsome, or an outfit is outlandish. Maybe it's the appeal of seeing but not quite grasping what you see. Who were these people? Did they love each other? Hate each other? Was this lawn party that small town's social event of the year or a veritable Salon des Refusés?

The past always holds mystery—nowhere more than in castoff and forgotten photographs. John Winship recycles the past for modern-day eyes. Whether he succeeds or not, you must judge for yourself.