Ghostwriters

New paintings by Catherine Courtenaye

March 7 to April 7, 2007    

Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 7,  6 – 8 pm

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 6 pm  

Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts is pleased to announce our first exhibition with Catherine Courtenaye. The artist’s layered paintings appropriate text from nineteenth century American notebooks. Scanning some of the titles of her works gives one a window into the person laboring to uplift his or her self through the skill of fine penmanship; the artificers, bricklayers or glaziers are just a part of the cast of characters taking part in this nationwide craze for self-improvement.

Abracadabra 10 (Plum Bracket) 12 x 12"

Yet the rigid confines of Victorian writing technique are just the starting points for the artist’s lushly colored and atmospheric works. In Courtenaye’s words, “vestiges of elementary mark-making—alphabets, signatures, equations—serve as counterpoints to my looser treatment of line, edge and space. One hundred and fifty years later, my paintings navigate between the rigors of those perfect lines and my own imperfect brushes.”

In her recent work, Courtenaye deploys the marginalia found in penmanship manuals and other period documents. As viewers we feel a connection to these stray marks, and immediately relate to the individual who made them. “One can see the human impulse to let the mind stray, with pen in hand,” the artist notes. “Digital technology has replaced the handwritten page—but the unselfconscious expression found in these arrangements and drawings will forever remain the mark of the humans who make them...”