Marisa Adesman
Red in Tooth and Claw, 2025
Oil on paper
Unframed: 22 x 30 inches (55.9 x 76.2 cm), paper size; image: 13 11/16 x 22 1/2 inches (34.75 x 57.15 cm); framed: 31 1/4 x 38 3/4 inches. (79.4 x 98.4 cm)
Copyright The Artist
Marisa Adesman’s paintings transform domestic interiors into charged psychological spaces where beauty and danger coexist. Drawing on Dutch still life and surrealist traditions, she examines the thin line between desire...
Marisa Adesman’s paintings transform domestic interiors into charged psychological spaces where beauty and danger coexist. Drawing on Dutch still life and surrealist traditions, she examines the thin line between desire and violence, tenderness and control. Red in Tooth and Claw takes its title from Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H., a phrase describing nature’s indifference to human morality. In this composition, flowers wilt, skin flushes, and a porcelain vessel becomes both armor and wound. In dialogue with Dalí’s The God of the Bay of Roses, Adesman channels his fascination with sensuality and rupture into a more intimate register—where the boundaries between pleasure, power, and pain dissolve.
