At the heart of Lucy Liu ’s new show at Alisan Fine Arts in New York is a portrait of a family. Parents pose behind three young children in an idyllic park, the picture of domestic togetherness. Yet, the image resists clarity. The figures’ faces dissolve into a blur, their outlines waver as though half-remembered or softened by time. Memory, the work suggests, is an unstable thing. “It’s built in layers, and it changes depending on where you’re standing,” Liu told me over email. “When I layer or obscure something, it’s not about hiding it—it’s about acknowledging that we never have full access to the original moment.” Lucy Liu, Family Portrait (2016). Photo courtesy of Alisan Fine Arts. Still, it’s not stopped the painter from attempting to grasp at these moments in works that reflect exactly that inaccessibility. Liu’s latest outing, aptly titled “ Hard Feelings ,” surfaces recent paintings that mine a personal narrative, filtered through the gauze of memory.…