What is my work about?
My paintings are the direct visualization of the way I see the world: the blending of interior spaces that exist (either in the past or in our minds) and the way those visualizations can be so mysterious, full and empty all at the same time. I make small oil paintings that are very detailed and meant to be experienced by one person at a time. I hope to make a connection with the viewer that draws them in and perhaps reminds them of their own interior life.
Artist Statement
I often think about the way I imagine spaces before I see them and how my ideas differ vastly from the way those spaces actually appear. It’s these places we create in our minds that inform my paintings. I am interested in the way one can automatically generate these images from just a few verbal cues—are they pieced together from distant memories or is it something more obscure?
I begin the painting process by collaging together photographs from old books on the history of interiors, then making paintings based on those collages. I have found the images from the books resonate with me even though I have never experienced them in real life. I am drawn to certain interiors and ways of arranging the composition. The images I use to collage are mostly from homes in the Victorian era. These pictures hold a fascination for me and cause me to wonder if there is something lurking under the surface. As I’m collaging I imagine the people that lived in those spaces; I begin to catch glimpses of their former lives. It seems the difference between the real and the imagined is quite tenuous.
From a young age I have questioned this tenuous relationship, partly because my mother told my three sisters and I that our house was haunted. I noticed how fear dramatically shifts one’s perception of spaces. Some of these homes have been used as examples of the concept horror vacui, or the fear of empty space, which is a type of decorating that fills up every possible surface. This type of filling up, instead of diminishing the emptiness, seems to call attention to it. In my paintings I try to make that emptiness visible.
When I first began this body of work, the paintings were in black and white. I found that the limited palette reminds me of the past—I imagine it’s a lost world that we can’t quite get access to. Grey can be mysterious and speaks about something that was once alive and is now dying. I am slowly starting to introduce color, which is the part of the image where things from the past come to life again for a brief moment in the mind’s eye. It is also a way to talk about the two worlds that are happening at once. Sometimes it feels as if I am stuck on this side of things—that there may be another unseen world that we are all also a part of and can make visible through looking at and making paintings.
Education
2006 MFA Combined Media, Hunter College
2003 BFA Studio Arts, The University of Illinois at Chicago
1997-98 The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Solo and Two Person Exhibitions
2015
Armin Volckers, Gretchen Scherer, Galerie Lake, Oldenburg, Germany, Two Person Show
2012
On the Way Home, The Active Space, New York, Solo Show
Selected Group Exhibitions
2015
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, Firework Gallery, New York
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Evening Hours, New York
Fractured Atlas, Storefront Ten Eyck, New York
2014
Not a Force But a Curvature, Novella Gallery, New York
2013
Governors Island Art Fair, Governors Island, New York
2012
It’s Hard to Leave When You Can’t Find the Door, LaMontagne Gallery, Boston
2011
Governors Island Art Fair, Governors Island, New York
Tide Pool, Sarah Meltzer Gallery/Projects, New York
2010
Second Story, Pepin Moore Gallery, Los Angeles
Governors Island Art Fair, Governors Island, New York
2009
Everybody, Envoy Gallery, New York
2007
With Teeth, Priska C. Juschka Gallery, New York
2005
Greater Brooklyn, CRG Gallery, New York
2004
Daydreaming, Slight Alienation, Cruel Kindness and Detached Sentimentality,
Joymore Gallery, New York
2003
Plastic Fantastic, 1926 Gallery, Chicago
Prizes and Awards
2005
Graf Travel Grant, Berlin, Hunter College
2003
School Faculty Prize in fine art, University of Illinois at Chicago
2002
John E. Walley Memorial Scholarship, University of Illinois at Chicago
Talent Tuition Waiver, University of Illinois at Chicago
John Richardson Sr. Award in painting, University of Illinois at Chicago
Residencies and Fellowships
2015
Vermont Studio Center Residency
Vermont Studio Center Fellowship
2013
Governors Island Art Fair Residency
2011
Governors Island Art Fair Residency
2006
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
Skowhegan Endowment for Scholarship Fellowship
Bibliography
2013
ArtFCity, “Why You Should Go to Governors Island Art Fair,” September 2013 Gabriela Vainsencher
2009
XLR8R Magazine, “New York State of Mind: Seven Gotham City
Visual Artists on the Rise for 2010,” February 16, 2010 Vivian Host
2007
Whistle, curated by Sarah Cain, published by San Francisco Museum of Art, March 2007
2005
The New York Times, “Greater Brooklyn,” July 8, 2005 Roberta Smith
Teaching
2013-present The Joan Mitchell Foundation, Lead Artist Teacher
2008-2013 The Joan Mitchell Foundation, Assistant Artist Teacher