The Museum of Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center Hosts Joellyn Duesberry's Paintings

Written by Conrad Tomek Wednesday, 17 August 2011 02:27

Colorado Springs, CO.- The Museum of Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is proud to present "Elevated Perspective: Paintings by Joellyn Duesberry", on view in the El Pomar, Steiner Galleries until September 11th. In the late 1990s, the artist earned a World Trade Center grant to study and paint the cityscape for five months. The grant came from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council who provided Duesberry with a studio on the 91st Floor of the north tower. The person who replaced Duesberry in the Artist Residency program died in the attacks of 9/11. There are three paintings in the exhibition painted during this time and one painting from 2002 ("First Pairing: Ground Zero and Elephant Graveyard") of the Ground Zero.

Joellyn Duesberry is among the most important artists working in Colorado today and is one of the most significant landscape painters in the West. While many contemporary landscape painters continue to romanticize their subjects and depict a West that once was, Duesberry is drawn to the West that is. She explores a full spectrum of sites and calls attention to places affected human activity. Waterways, cityscapes, quarries, junkyards, and natural landscapes are all part of Duesberry’s visual language. She suggests ephemeral aspects of these places, such as passage of time, atmosphere, and transitory human presence. Ms. Duesberry is nationally recognized for her dynamic landscape paintings. Her canvases are remarkable for their rich and intense use of color, and for her distinct interest in the geometry of the various cityscapes and landscapes she interprets.


Many of Ms. Duesberry's paintings, though clearly contemporary, echo such great modernist masters as John Marin and Milton Avery. Her use of light, shadow, scale and texture culminates in paintings that are both visually and emotionally arresting. Ms. Duesberry divides her time between studios in Denver, Colorado and Millbrook, N.Y., and has painted plein-air around the world for 40 plus years. She began exhibiting in New York City in 1979, and has since had 10 New York solo exhibitions, with recent retrospectives at the Century Association and Denver Art Museum in January 2006, titled "Joellyn Duesberry: Three Decades of Paint." She has shown widely around the country, and is represented by seven galleries coast to coast. A pivotal point in Ms. Duesberry's career came in 1986 when she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant which enabled her to work with Richard Diebenkorn. Diebenkorn encouraged her to try monotype print-making, and since then she has been actively producing and exhibiting her monotypes alongside her plein-air paintings.

Founded in 1936, the Museum of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is committed to innovative, educational and multidisciplinary arts experiences, building upon theirr history as a unique cultural pillar of the Rocky Mountain region. The new museum addition, designed by nationally recognized architect David Owen Tryba, complements and enhances the original structure designed by New Mexican architect John Gaw Meem in 1936. The addition features nine permanent collection galleries, two traveling exhibition galleries, and an unprecedented tactile gallery. The expanded 132,286 square-foot facility hosts major international traveling and changing exhibitions and features works from the FAC's significant permanent collection. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.csfineartscenter.org

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