Stanley & Ed, 2006, oil on panel, 10 x 8"

 

CATHERINE KEHOE: DIRECT DESCENT  
February 9 - March 6, 2007
Opening Reception FRIDAY: FEB. 9th 5- 7pm

For Immediate Release

Howard Yezerski Gallery is pleased to present Direct Descent, an exhibition by Catherine Kehoe. The paintings in Direct Descent reflect a shift in the direction of Kehoe's work. Known for her intimate self-portraits and figure studies, this series was prompted by an unexpected discovery of new source material.

Inspired by a newspaper article about a man who found surviving family members he thought had perished in the Holocaust, Kehoe began a search for information about her own ancestors, who had roots in Poland. This led her to a branch of her family tree she hadn't known about. As digital scans of old family photos arrived via e-mail from people she had never heard of, Kehoe begun to look for a way to convey in paint the lost lives shown in the photos.

Translating the experience to her own medium, Kehoe fleshed out the lives of her ancestors with the little information that she found in the photographs. At first focusing on faces, gradually Kehoe shifted the emphasis to full figures and their relationship to each other and to their environment. Gestalt, clothing and postures in the photographs told as much as could be known. These paintings are driven by an urge to record and transform individual lives into painted images, an overarching and primary concern of painters throughout history.

A Pollock - Krasner Foundation Grant funded Kehoe's studio work on this series as well as a trip to Osmolowszczyzna, Poland, the village of her previously unknown ancestors.

 

 

For further information please contact Alexis Dunfee at Howard Yezerski Gallery 617.262.0550 Tuesday - Saturday 10-5:30pm