Article written by Jake Rosenberg.
It’s early December, and painter Josie Girand stands quietly in Galerie Shibumi, a small yet radiant art space tucked into a vibrant corner of New York City’s Lower East Side. The gallery’s white walls and polished concrete floors serve as a subtle stage for Girand’s newest series, “The Trick.” The show, which opened on December 5th and runs through January 5th, is a body of work that promises visitors a month-long window into Girand’s world—a place woven from delicate emotion, wistful symbolism, and painterly whispers of surreal narrative. The paintings on display evoke dreamy tableaus where fairies, young women, and barely tangible apparitions float between heartbreak and self-discovery. Each piece is a portal, beckoning the viewer to step into Girand’s psyche and linger awhile.
The path to this exhibition was as organic as the brushstrokes that adorn Girand’s canvases. Before their professional collaboration, Folana Dione Miller, the owner of Galerie Shibumi, encountered Girand’s work in the most casual of ways. Both women rented studio space in the same building.
Stepping closer to the canvases, one can’t help but notice Girand’s reverence for subtle detail. Born and raised in New York City, she navigated her formative years in a metropolis teeming with stimuli. Yet, as a child, she was often shy, spending countless afternoons indoors, sketching faces and forms in private corners. In one of her earliest memories, she recalls trying to capture the curve of her mother’s neck on paper, discovering that the act of looking closely and drawing what she saw felt like a secret key to understanding the world. While her lifelong home shaped her perspective, Girand’s formal art education took her away from the city to Kenyon College, a small liberal arts school in rural Ohio. There, the non-competitive, intimate environment encouraged experimentation. Here, she learned to trust her voice, refine her technique, and ultimately embrace the idiosyncratic themes that have now become hallmarks of her work.
In these early years, Girand focused on drawing, honing her ability to transcribe her inner landscapes onto paper. But about three years ago, she fell in love with painting, finding oil paints particularly seductive for their smooth blending capabilities and subtlety of texture. Where once her approach leaned toward realism—carefully rendered portraits that anchored her work in tangible human forms—she now delves into surrealism. The influence of artists such as Leonora Carrington, Edward Hopper, Adrian Ghenie, and Anna Weyant is palpable. Like Carrington, Girand gravitates toward elusive narrative elements that slip between waking life and dream; like Hopper, she captures quiet moments that hum with emotional tension; and much like Weyant, she is unafraid to inject a note of melancholy, even as her palette might flirt with whimsy. Surrounded by the energetic New York art scene and supported by artist friends who push her to experiment, Girand has developed a style that merges personal mythology with universal longing.
The series “The Trick” initially took root in a painful personal experience. Inspired by the narrative of a girl falling in love with a “cotton candy man”—a metaphorical character doomed to dissolve under the weight of her tears—these paintings began as a direct response to heartbreak. Over time, as her emotional wounds healed, the story expanded beyond its initial allegory. Girand came to realize that the heartbreak was only one chapter in a broader meditation on love, obsession, isolation, and the strange beauty of learning to stand on your own. Each painting in this series can be viewed as a fairytale or allegory: a moment from her life, translated into visual poetry. But she welcomes reinterpretation, encouraging viewers to impose their own narratives, draw their own lessons, and find personal meaning in the swirling colors and delicate brushstrokes.
Girand’s working methods are as varied as the emotions she tackles. She may complete a painting in an hour, riding a surge of inspiration that barely allows the paint to dry, or she may labor for months, revisiting a piece as it slowly reveals its final form. Priced from $900 to $4,400, these works are accessible to a range of collectors. Each painting radiates an intimacy that invites close looking. For Girand, the creative process is therapeutic. When confronted with an artistic block, she focuses on painting a face with compelling light, using the human visage as a beacon to guide her through uncertainty. Once that face emerges from the canvas, it becomes an anchor, empowering her to develop the scene around it.
Beneath the fairytale surface, Girand’s paintings subtly engage with broader themes. Past series have touched upon climate change and consumerism without showing overt environmental disasters or crowds of shoppers. Instead, she employs gentle suggestion—strange figures, symbolic compositions—to nudge viewers into contemplating the underlying issues. She believes that subtlety can be more impactful than overt moralizing, as it allows each person to discover connections independently.
In a world oversaturated with information and rapid-fire reactions, Girand sees art as a mirror, one that can reflect the most private corners of the human experience. It can create space for vulnerability, contemplation, and emotional resonance. In her view, art’s role in society today lies in its capacity to encourage empathy and introspection. For Girand, life in a fast-paced city and a complicated modern landscape has taught her that feelings like loneliness and longing are not just personal aches—they are shared human conditions. Within this mutual isolation, she seeks to remind viewers that while each of us might feel alone at times, that sense of solitude can bind us together as much as it sets us apart.
