ELIZABETH, A Memorial Exhibition to Honor Artist Elizabeth Gourlay 1961-2024
June 1 – July 1, 2024
Opening June 1, 11:00 – 5:00 public invited
A two-venue exhibition presented by:
KENISE BARNES FINE ART daphne:art GALLERY AND ADVISORY
7 Fulling Lane, Kent CT 55 West Morris Road, Bantam CT
860.592.0220 860.989.7719
www.kbfa.com www.daphneandersondeeds.com
Kenise Barnes Fine Art and daphne:art Gallery and Advisory announce Elizabeth, a celebration of the life and work of Elizabeth Gourlay, beloved artist, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, and friend who died on April 27.
Gourlay’s subtle and sophisticated paintings, drawings, and collages are meditations on light and color. Gourlay’s process began with small drawings and collages she made as studies that often evolved into larger paintings. Based on the grid, observations of nature and meditation on color and form, her work is a gradual yet progressive rumination leading to a complex vocabulary of shapes, color and line. Musical composition, emotional states and our collective subconscious resonate within bars, lines and blocks of color. Gourlay’s work alludes to a wide array of influences, from her father’s architectural drawings and her mother’s keen use of color in her work in interior design, to her appreciation of the mathematics of music, 17th Century Rajasthani miniatures and Paul Klee’s Egypt paintings. Gourlay’s combinations of found forms and colors evoke the emotional and the aesthetic and present the viewer with an opening to a personal and purely abstract experience.
Elizabeth includes more than 60 works selected from the artist’s studio. Together, the tandem exhibitions at Kenise Barnes Fine Art and daphne:art offer a comprehensive survey of Elizabeth Gourlay’s prolific career. Both galleries will offer large-scale canvases and shaped paintings. daphne:art will also show collages and prints.
Gourlay’s work has been exhibited widely in the US and in Scotland, Germany and France. Her work has been featured in Two Coats of Paint, In Their Studios, The New Criterion, Art New England, Gorky’s Granddaughter, to name a few. The artist is the recipient of numerous residencies, fellowships and awards including Artist in Residence at the studio of Sol LeWitt in Spoleto, Italy. Her one-person exhibition at the New Britain Museum of American Art last year was extended by popular demand.
A Connecticut native, Gourlay earned her MFA in painting from Yale University. She graduated with First Class Honors for her BA from Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland and she was a Fellow at the Yale/Norfolk Summer School of Music and Art.
Kenise Barnes Fine Art has represented Elizabeth Gourlay since 2018.
For further information, images or to arrange a preview please contact kenise@kbfa.com
