Deborah Curtiss

Deborah Curtiss - Painting


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CHRYSALIS Series
1. CHRY, 36" • 42" • 34" • 44"
2. HRYS, 50" x 30"
3. RYSA, 54" • 40" • 52" • 38"
4. SALI, 40" • 64" • 32" • 66"
5. ALIS, 26" x 60"

Dimensions are left, top, right, bottom

Artist Statement
Drawings in graphite on partially primed or unprimed linen canvas are integrated with stained acrylic colors and abstract neuronic imagery. Some canvases are formed from scraps of canvas sewn together.


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Artist Statement
Multi-canvas Paintings
Throughout my career I have combined paintings together in a variety of ways, sometimes bolting them together, others continuing an image over several canvases with spaces between.

LAKESCAPE
            Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
            But limns the water, or but writes in dust.
            —Francis Bacon (1561-1626) The World
1. L-E-A, graphite on titanium white over acrylic stained linen canvas, 36” x 60” overall
          Iinspired by Icebound River, ca. 1915, by Charles Rosen as seen in the Michener Museum.
2. K-C-E, graphite on micaceous white over acrylic stained linen canvas, 37” x 54” overall
          Inspired by Shadows in the Snow, n.d., by Henry B. Snell, Michener Museum

3. LIFE–PORT–RAIT
            Charged with creating a self-portrait in conjunction with a designed object, I chose to use silhouettes of myself standing on
            chairs designed by: LIFE: Thomas Moser             PORT: Michael Thonet             RAIT: Pavel Janek
            They are set into two interwoven landscapes (alternately within and outside the figures): the Negev Desert, Israel (visited 1981),
             and a snowscape inspired by Claude Monet, Road to Vétheuil, Snow Effect (Williams College Art Museum).
LIFE, acrylic on hand-woven silk, 70" • 32" • 64" • 22"
PORT, acrylic on hand-woven silk, 66" • 26" • 72" • 32"
RAIT, acrylic on hand-woven silk, 64" • 32" • 70" • 22"
Sizes, left • top • right • bottom

4. PENTI-MENTO, graphite and acrylic on 2 linen and 8 cotton previously painted canvases arranged in 2 groups of 5 paintings,
             37” x 80” overall
            The presence or emergence of earlier images…that have been changed and painted over. Imagery is inspired by paintings I
            had seen at the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown PA: (A) The Narrows, n.d., by Walter Baum, (B) Windybush Valley,
            1939, by George Sotter
            Intended configuration:   A  B  A  B  A
                                                  B  A    B    A  B

SEXUAL PERSONAE
5. SEPE, acrylic on seven unprimed, trapezial linen canvases fastened together, 48” x 66” overall
Upon reading Camille Paglia’s book of this title, I was inspired to integrate the male / female, the imaginative / chthonic.
The imagery is an island-scape superimposed on an expanded figure-scape.

6. ZEPHYR, acrylic on hand-woven silks 56” x 104” overall, with edge lengths from 18” to 54”
Extending the concepts developed in L-P-R, I interwove two seascapes (one predominantly ochre, the other blue) in and out of
silhouetted figures.


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PRAGUE SECRET FIRE Paintings
1. Praha II, graphite, acrylic, pastel / raw linen canvas, 64" • 42" • 66" • 36"
     (Staré Mesto)
2. Praha III, graphite, acrylic, pastel / raw linen canvas, 68" • 34" • 66" • 36"
     (Hradcany)
3. Praha VII, graphite, acrylic / pieced raw linen canvas, 40" • 16" • 48" • 23"
     (Belvedere Pavilion)
4. Praha VIII, graphite, acrylic / pieced raw linen canvas, 54" • 24" • 32" • 26"
     (Staré Mesto)

Dimensions are left, top, right, bottom

Artist Statement
Secret Fire is an alchemical concept by which early scientists attempted to create, with newly developed procedures, gold from baser elements. Since gold is an element itself, the alchemists were unsuccessful, but their efforts are credited with giving birth to modern chemistry and the scientific method. The historically preserved Alchemy Lane, within the walls of Prague’s medieval Hradcany Castle complex, commemorates the city’s history as a center for early scientific development. In that spirit I gave the city colorful skies and concluded the series (PRAHA IX) with an evocation of Mysterium Conjunctionis, the final step of alchemy. Employing graphite on unprimed linen canvas serendipitously captures the prevailing color of Prague’s exquisite architecture.

About Deborah Curtiss

Contact Information
Greene Street Artists
5225 Greene Street, #15
Philadelphia, PA 19144
tel: 215-438-5759
e-mail: debcurtiss@verizon.net
www.greenestreetartists.org
www.nacollective.com
www.phillysidearts.com/artists/deborah-curtiss
Please contact artist for purchases, commissions, etc.

Artist Statement
Not expecting to be an artist, Deborah Curtiss recently reached the 50th anniversary of having first picked up a brush to paint a painting. It was during her first year at Yale University School of Art (where she’d been accepted in third year graphic design after three years of liberal arts at Antioch College) at the urging of Josef Albers & Sewell Sillman who recognized a strong sense of color and composition with which to begin. Temperamentally unsuited for graphic design, in February 1959 she transferred to second year painting. Amazed by the challenge to one’s intellect that accompanies the sensual enthrallment with emerging colors and forms, Curtiss’ paintings have continued to evolve with a life that seems quite their own.

Educated also at University of the Arts, she has devoted much of her life and work, in addition to painting and exhibiting, to educating vision. In Philadelphia, this included teaching drawing, painting, and/or visual literacy from 1972 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Drexel University, Temple University, and/or the University of the Arts (also graduate seminars) until 1998. During her career she also has written more than 300 published articles, reviews, and abstracts, and two books:

Making Art Safely: Alternatives in Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Graphic Design and Photography, with artist Merle Spandorfer, and toxicologist Jack Snyder, M.D. (1993) New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold; acquired by John Wiley & Sons, 1998.

Introduction to Visual Literacy, A Guide to the Visual Arts and Communication (1987) Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall; acquired by Pearson, 1996. A second edition is currently in the works.

As a painter, Curtiss proceeds as a composer and an explorer, using drawing and painting to discover visual metaphors for the complexities of life. While referencing recognizable forms and situations, these metaphors include evocations of inner and other realities of being human and reflections upon our place on earth. Her method/process is to draw from life and create paintings from the drawings, permitting transformations to occur as a spontaneous and evolving process. As a result, many of the works incorporate aspects associated with drawing as well as painting. Most of her recent paintings are “trapezial” in shape: four sides of unequal length, which is an attempt to fly free of the traditional window view of nature while reflecting the fragmentation of contemporary life.

To see LIFE-PORT-RAIT, SEPE, and ZEPHYR in person, they are on exhibit in the public area of The Sporting Club at the Bellevue (at the top of the adjacent parking garage), 224 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, through October 2009. The Sporting Club is open 7 am to 10 pm daily, 8 to 8 on Sunday.

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