2009-02-13
art + artists
Nicole Duennebier describes what she does as "cataloging textures" of those "under dwelling malevolent creatures...[while depicting a world that is]..a combination of textural pleasure and textual disgust."
Yesterday, she talked with an audience at the New Britain Museum of American Art
about her work, which is on display at the NEW/NOW gallery space until April 26th.
She turns to nature for inspiration. While living in Gloucester. MA she would go down to the tidal pools to study the flora and fauna living there. She found she was both fascinated and repelled with the beautiful and the grotesque lying abed together. This dual fascination, as applied to her renderings, results in showing everything she sees.
James Baker, President of the Maine College of Art, in Portland ME, observed of Nicole that the variety of studies required when she went to college benefited her then budding art trajectory
I've got to agree.
Nicole Duennebier describes what she does as "cataloging textures" of those "under dwelling malevolent creatures...[while depicting a world that is]..a combination of textural pleasure and textual disgust."Yesterday, she talked with an audience at the New Britain Museum of American Art
about her work, which is on display at the NEW/NOW gallery space until April 26th. She turns to nature for inspiration. While living in Gloucester. MA she would go down to the tidal pools to study the flora and fauna living there. She found she was both fascinated and repelled with the beautiful and the grotesque lying abed together. This dual fascination, as applied to her renderings, results in showing everything she sees.
James Baker, President of the Maine College of Art, in Portland ME, observed of Nicole that the variety of studies required when she went to college benefited her then budding art trajectory
Nicole ...[explained] that what surprised her most in her education was the role of liberal arts courses, which she admitted she at first tried to avoid. A course in coastal ecosystems presented an unexpected resource of materials to inspire her and “changed my whole body of work.”At last night's reception I asked her if people, upon finding out that her inspiration is drawn from what she finds in nature, if the people are surprised about this. She indicated that they were. She went on to talk of the distance humans maintain from nature, and commented on society's lack of awareness of what is acually out there and surrounding us all the time, but added, now that she's aware of the elements of nature herself, she has to depict it. for "when you are in nature and you see something beautiful, you have to accept the things around it..."
I've got to agree.
Images: left- at the NBMAA receoption; right- Treacle Monster, 2008 || FOR MORE ABOUT Ms. Duennebier: Nicole Duennebier paintings 2005-2008; James Baker's weblog entry on Nicole or Days and Nights in the Forest
Labels: NBMAA, Nicole Duennebier, young artists
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