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Carolyn Brady
December 1, 2007 - January 9, 2008
This is to let you know that the next exhibition at Nancy Hoffman Gallery will be Carolyn Brady’s first posthumous show, featuring monotypes and a selection of watercolors. The show opens on December 1, 2007 and continues through January 9, 2008. The exhibition will take place at the gallery’s 429 West Broadway address. The move to 520 West 27th Street gets closer by the week; stay tuned for details on the move in 2008.
Stourhead Across the Lake with Dark Water (III) 1997 monotype 40 x 60 1/2 inches
For the first time, Brady’s commitment to the monotype (as her preferred mode of print making) becomes clear in this exhibit. Never before shown, these works span fifteen years. During this time Brady created several series, sometimes named for the studio in which she worked, such as Tamarind Still Life, Island Studio, and Mill Road, at others named for the subject of the series such as English Gardens, Longwood (Gardens), and Les Fleurs--images of flowers in French gardens. The monotypes range in scale from 20x30 inches up to 40x60 inches. Brady’s monotypes have a life of their own, more expressive and impressionistic than her carefully rendered watercolors, on which she worked for several months at a time.
Tamarind Still Life XII 1999 monotype 22 x 30 inches
The media are different, each demanding in its own way; when Brady painted in watercolor she kept the brush dry so that the paint was immediately absorbed into the paper, using what she called “bits of paint” to create an image. The rigors of the monotype process required the artist to paint with ink on a metal plate, and complete the image within a day so that the plate could then be run through the press with the ink still wet. The “painting” the artist created on the plate was imbedded on the paper in reverse when being run through the press, thus the left side appeared on the right side of the finished monotype.
 Still Life II 1997 monotype 30 x 22 1/2 inches |
The most muscular of her monotypes are the English Garden series, measuring 40x60 inches, dating from 1997. The athletic feat of accomplishing (in fewer than twelve hours) a complex tapestry of nature filled with a riot of green grasses, hedges, topiaries and trees, along with color-filled flowers, fountains and gateways, presented the artist with a Herculean challenge. In the monotypes, Brady offers the viewer a rigorously observed, sensually rendered tour of life’s pulse as manifest in the gardener’s formal design, executed with staccato bits of printer’s ink about an inch in length traversing the surface of the paper.
Longwood VI 1989 monotype 33 x 37 inches
In her 1999 Tamarind still life monotypes, Brady’s gesture is broader, more abstract, more fluid, depicting still lifes from her summer home in Maine, café tabletops from visits to France, and her home in Baltimore. Flowers, dishes, glasses, bottles of Evian or Vittel are washes of color, confident notes across the paper. Packed with the energy of an abstract expressionist work, these still lifes offer the viewer an alternative vista into one of the artist’s favorite subjects.
Tamarind Still Life XV 1999 monotype 22 x 30 inches
Brady was known for her garden and still life watercolors, which are close-in views of tabletops, tablescapes, incorporating the ordinary stuff of life: books, letters, postcards, hand bags, luncheon finery, plates, glasses, napkins, cutlery, and the leftovers of a meal. In “Purple Beans,” 1981, a plate of glistening purple beans from the artist’s garden, two cut-crystal vases of orange flowers, a bowl of ripe peaches and plums, a crystal cake plate holding a stack of mail--letters and cards--bedeck a table covered with a green tablecloth with white appliquéd flowers. The fruits tell us the season is summer, the joy of its produce manifest in the table’s offerings. Adding to the brilliant palette is the artist’s blue wall, the backdrop for this summer repast.
 Lamp XII 1999 monotype 28 x 21 1/2 inches |
 Lamp VI 1999 monotype 28 x 21 1/2 inches |
Included in the exhibition are a few works from the artist’s 2005 show of watercolors, which she entitled “A Maine Idyll,” images of summer in Vinalhaven. In this exhibition she conveys the beauty of the natural world in paint. One of her favorite summer rituals was lunch with friends in a bean house, a teepee-shaped structure, covered with vines and runner beans, in July and August, with an interior space large enough to accommodate a picnic table. Two monumental bean house works are on view in this exhibition. From the objects of every day in her still lifes to the fruits of summer gardens, Brady was an artist who transformed the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Sissinghurst Lime Walk XXVII 1997 monotype 40 x 60 1/2 inches
Carolyn Brady was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma in 1937. She received her B.F.A. from the University of Oklahoma at Norman and her M.F.A. from the same institution. She taught at the University of Missouri in Saint Louis.
Les Fleurs XXV 1994 monotype 30 1/2 x 34 3/4 inches
Carolyn Brady’s work has been widely shown throughout the country at the Academy of the Arts, Easton, Maryland; The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Boise Art Museum, Idaho; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; The Canton Museum of Art, Ohio; Center for the Arts, Vero Beach, Florida; Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina; Davenport Museum of Art, Iowa; William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; Flint Institute of Art, Michigan; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana; Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee; Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York; Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga;
 Tamarind Still Life V 1999 monotype 22 x 30 |
 Tamarind Still Life II 1999 monotype 22 x 30 |
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Jacksonville Art Museum, Florida; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina; University of Missouri at Kansas City and St. Louis; Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; The Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, New Jersey; Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York; National Academy of Design, New York; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; Newport Art Museum, Rhode Island; University of Oklahoma, Norman; Oklahoma City Art Museum, Oklahoma; Oklahoma State University, Stillwater; Orlando Museum of Art, Florida; Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; The Philbrook Museum, Tulsa; Pittsburgh Art Center, Pennsylvania; Plains Art Museum, Fargo, North Dakota; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Art Gallery, University of Rhode Island, Kingston;
Tamarind Still Life XI 1999 monotype 22 x 30 inches
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida; San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas; Springfield Art Museum, Missouri; Wilson Arts Center/The Harvey School, Rochester, New York; Wichita Art Museum, Kansas; Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts; among others. Her work has also been shown abroad at The Miyagi Museum of Art, Miyagi; Sogo Museum of Art, Yokohama; Tokushima Modern Art Museum, Tokushima; Museum of Modern Art, Shiba; and Kochi Prefectural Museum of Folk Art, Kochi, Japan.
Still Life I 1997 monotype 30 x 22 1/2 inches
The artist’s work is represented in numerous public collections, among them: The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; The Canton Museum of Art, Ohio; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Indiana; William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan; Huntsville Museum of Art, Alabama; Indiana University Art Museum, Indianapolis, Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
 Longwood I 1989 monotype 33 x 37 inches |
 Longwood XIX 1989 monotype 34 x 43 inches |
Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; The New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut; Norton Gallery and School of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City; University of Oklahoma, Museum of Art, Norman;
Tamarind Still Life IX 1999 monotype 22 x 30 inches
Orlando Museum of Art, Florida; The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma; University of Rochester Museum, New York; St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri; J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; Springfield Art Museum, Missouri; Tampa Museum of Art, Florida; Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts.
Mill Road XX 1998 monotype 41 x 29 inches
For additional information and/or photographs, please call 212-966-6676 or e-mail Nancy Hoffman Gallery at info@nancyhoffmangallery.com. Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 6pm.
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