EMILY EVELETH

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MILES McENERY GALLERY is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent paintings by Emily Eveleth. Twenty Paintings, the artist’s inaugural exhibition at the gallery will open 21 October at 520 West 21st Street and remain on view through 27 November 2021. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by Jackson Arn.

Glowing jellies and smooth glazes, powdery flushes of pink, and viscous drips of marmalade all come to life in Emily Eveleth’s intimate paintings of donuts. For nearly three decades, Eveleth has painted her subjects in a way that abandons all notions of the typical “nature morte.” Rather, Eveleth’s paintings are reminiscentof classical portraits; elegant and isolated figures illuminated by dramatic light and gestural brushstrokes.

All twenty of the exhibited works are vertical, oil on panel, measure 28 by 16 inches, and based on the artist’s archive of photographs. “In the past I have painted directly from the source photographs. For these new paintings I worked on them first in Photoshop and with paper collage to create a new source. That then became the reference for drawing the underpainting,” Eveleth states. Her deliberate use of light, confident, improvisational energy of the composition, and overall technical mastery affirm Eveleth’s ability to communicate by virtue of a brushstroke.

This series is a continuation of an exploration into color, and, in particular, the color pink. Could pink be simultaneously pastel and nearly fluorescent? Soft and intense? “Entire books could be written about this painter’s use of pink—pink, the color of raw muscle and pale skin vexed to a blush, but also of plastic lawn flamingos and Valentine’s Day schmaltz. Eveleth knows how to have it both ways. In Pleasures and Follies of a Good Natured Libertine, one kind of pink curdles into the other; what’s sensual and intimate grows tacky and lukewarm, with a strong chemical odor. But one pink doesn’t triumph over the other any more than folly triumphs over pleasure; each holds the other steady, creating a host of associations that haunt you well after you’ve looked away,” Arn articulates.

The paintings are inspired by a variety of sources to include: the paint handling in Gustave Courbet’s late seascapes, the street photography of twentieth century photographer Weegee, Leo Steinberg’s 1974 essay on Pontormo’s Capponi Chapel, the 1748 poem “Castles of Indolence” by John Thomson, and Olympia Press, a mid-twentieth century Paris based legendarily taboo-breaking publisher best known for publishing avant-garde literary fiction.

EMILY EVELETH (b.1960 in Hartford, CT) attended the Massachusetts College of Art in 1987 and received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Smith College in 1983.

She has had numerous solo exhibitions, including Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; “Future Possessive,” Zillman Art Museum at the University of Maine,Bangor, ME; “Results of Interpretation,”The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard,Cambridge, MA; “Past Imperfect,” Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston, MA; “Emily Eveleth, New Paintings - Degrees of Artifice,” Danese/Corey, New York, NY;“Art on the Marquee” (with Amy Baxter MacDonald), Boston Convention Center, Boston, MA; “FutureTense,” Miller/ Yezerski Gallery, Boston, MA; “Perspective,” Carroll House Gallery, Keene State College, Keene, NH; “Emily Eveleth: New Paintings

Recent group exhibitions include “Birds of the Northeast: Gulls to Great Auks,” Fairfield University Art Museum, Fairfield, CT; “Beginning: The Inaugural Exhibition,” Carol Corey Fine Art, Kent, CT; “Garden Party,” Carol Corey Fine Art, Kent, CT; “A La Carte:AVisual Exploration of our Relationship with Food,”Abroms-Engel Institute for theVisualArts,The University ofAlabama, Birmingham, AL; “Kith and Kin,” Lesley University, Cambridge, MA; “Off the Menu,” Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA; “Like Sugar,” Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; “Capita,” Danese/Corey, New York, NY; “We Dream/Beauty Beyound and Beneath” (curated by Deborah Davidson), Suffolk University Gallery, Boston, MA; “Drawing Conclusions,” Danese/ Corey, New York, NY; “Fertile Solitude” (curated by Elizabeth Devlin), Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; “Feast,” Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY; “Luscious,” Brattleboro Museum of Art, Brattleboro, VT; “Dynamic Conversations” (curated by Chris Rifkin), South Shore Art Center, Cohasset, MA; “Confections,” Allan Stone Projects, New York, NY;“Gaining Perspective:AVisual History of MassART,” Massachusetts College ofArt and Design,Boston,MA;“Food ForThought,” Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC and “Painting Intricacies,” Nave Gallery Annex, Somerville, MA.

Her numerous awards and residencies include the American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy in 2002; French Government Grant, Artist Residency Program, Rochefort-en-Terre, France in 1996; Art Matters Inc. Fellowship, New York, NY in 1995; National Endowment for the Arts/New England Foundation for the Arts, Fellowship Award in Painting, Boston, MA in 1994; Show Award, New Art ‘92, Kingston Gallery, Boston, MA and Merit Award,Women in the Visual Arts, Erector Square Gallery, New Haven, CT in 1992; Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Program, Finalist in Painting, Boston, MA in 1989 and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Painting and Printmaking Department Achievement Award, Boston, MA in 1986.

Her work is included in select collections including The Boston Public Library, Boston, MA; Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT; Fairfield University Art Museum, Fairfield, CT; Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The New England, Boston, MA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; The Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE and The Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA.

Emily Eveleth lives and works in Sherborn, MA.

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520 West 21st Street

21 October - 27 November 2021

Selected Works

Press Release