2020-21 Eleanor Conover

Eleanor Conover, the 2020-21 Alice C. Cole '42 Fellow, is a contemporary artist whose work engages with the physical and material conditions of painting as a metaphor for environmental time and space. Also employing elements of drawing, language, and history, the works imply spaces and states of excavation and accumulation.

view of a white walled gallery with wood floor; a number of irregularly-shaped abstract paintings hang on the walls

Glass Half Moon

Jewett Art Gallery

Sept. 8 - Nov. 5, 2021

Glass Half Moon brought a suite of 13 new paintings by Eleanor Conover to the Jewett Art Gallery at Wellesley College. At first glance many appear abstract, but look closer, and with time images begin to emerge and recurring motifs may be recognized. The title is a collision of the phrase 'glass half full (or empty)' with reference to the phases of the moon, and suggests that dichotomies of optimism and pessimism, plenitude and lack were very much on the artist's mind as she worked on this series through the intensely unusual prior year.

Drawing from multiple sources, the paintings together form a landscape where geologic time and the present collapse into a single moment, simultaneously outside of time itself and deeply embedded in the histories of art, science, archaeology, and personal narrative. Their surfaces are a palimpsest of references and materials both. A number of the paintings in this exhibition include pieces of marble, resting against the frames or attached to the surface of the canvas. Marble is a metamorphic stone. Limestone--itself a sedimentary rock, made up of the fossilized remains of what came before--is subjected to unimaginably intense pressures and heat, deep within the earth. Over time, a transformation occurs, and the limestone metamorphoses into marble. All the works in this show undergo the same sort of metamorphic change.

two small abstract paintings in wood frames on a white wall

A House is to Build and Untitled (Trochee), 12 x 9" each, oil on paper with dyed pine artist frames, 2020

large irregularly shaped abstract painting with shades of yellow, red, burgundy, and raw canvas; the canvas is very roughly shaped like a cartoon heart

Blackberry-Picking, 67 x 49", dye, bleach, acrylic, charcoal, and oil on linen with beveled pine, 2021

irregularly shaped and largely abstract painting with browns, blues, greens, and raw canvas; the canvas comes to a point at top right and the text 'of old' is visible across the bottom third of the piece

F/old, 54 x 40", dye, bleach, acrylic, oil, and graphite on linen with beveled pine, 2020

large mostly abstract painting in shades of burgundy with a blue tree-like form and visible horizontal crossbars; at bottom left is a notch cut into the painting and a small triangle of gray marble inset

Glass Half Moon, 67 x 49", dye, bleach, acrylic, oil, and graphite on linen with beveled pine and marble insert, 2020-21

large irregularly shaped abstract canvas in shades of ochre, yellow, orange, with blue; at bottom right is a bare wood frame corner; stripes of dark and light marble are attached to the surface of the canvas

Understudy, 70 x 50", dye, bleach, acrylic, graphite, oil, and marble on linen, 2021

large roughly hexagonal painting with dark greens, pink-stained canvas, and visible crossbar markings; mostly abstract, there is a portrait of a person resting their face on a hand at right; a large chunk of pink/gray marble rests on the floor at bottom left and the bottom left corner of the painting is delicately braced against it

Self Portrait with Marble, 72 x 52", dye, bleach, acrylic, oil, and graphite on linen with beveled pine and marble base, 2021

Born in Hartford, CT in 1988, Conover received her MFA at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and her BA from Harvard College. Recent past exhibitions include Able Baker Contemporary (Portland, ME), Bad Water (Knoxville, TN), and Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY). Her practice has been supported through artist residencies including the Vermont Studio Center, Cow House Studios, and the Joseph A. Fiore Art Center. With an interest in land and the environment, she has additionally been involved in the research of geologic histories in Philadelphia, PA and visual work regarding ecology in coastal places as remote as the Aleutian Islands, AK. She received a post-MFA teaching fellowship at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and at the time of this exhibition had recently relocated to Carlisle, PA, where she was an Assistant Professor of Art at Dickinson College.

close up detail shot of a painting with oranges, yellows, blues; gray and white strips of marble are attached to the surface of the canvas

close up on the bottom corner of a painting in shades of burgundy and blue, with a cut-out area and a rough triangular piece of mottled gray marble inset

Eleanor Conover artist website

three abstract paintings - large, medium, small - hanging in a gallery; the leftmost has strips of raw wood frame visible at its edges and is mostly blues; the middle is roughly shield-shaped; the rightmost is a small framed rectangle

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seal of the Alice C. Cole '42 awards - line drawing of a woman with chisel and paint brush, surrounded by circular borders and oak leaves

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