Live to Ride (E.P.)

With their small scale, Elizabeth Peyton’s portraits possess an intimate, even devotional, quality, one that is accentuated by their luminous color and smooth surfaces—as in the artist’s diminutive self-portrait Live to Ride (E.P.). Yet while Peyton is interested in what portraiture can reveal about a subject, a concern of equal importance—manifest in Live to Ride—is the question of what it can also keep mysterious or hidden. Though the work is rich with incidental detail, such as the patterning on a blanket against which she reclines and the decal on her T-shirt, it nonetheless reveals little about its maker. With her steady eyes and closed mouth, she appears impenetrable, and her pose, while casual, seems preternaturally still.