A Closer Look: Paintings by Connie Borup
By Donna Poulton
"Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves, we have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!" - Humbert Wolfe
Image courtesy of Connie Borup. Light Touch, 42 x 42 in., oil
Connie Borup’s opening “A Closer Look” offers the viewer 13 large-scale oil paintings and a number of mixed media works. The images are detailed … an intimate exploration of fall, a season often expressed in literature and poetry, but seldom examined in painting. Borup’s depictions of fall foliage are not inherently nostalgic, in fact far from it. She avoids the spectacular colors of fall using instead a tonal palette of dry grays, browns and yellows. But the images act as a mainline for deep memories of fall, perhaps because as P.D. James wrote, “It was one of those … autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.”
The exhibition at Phillips Gallery opens on October 21st and runs through November 11th, 2011.
Image courtesy of Connie Borup. Crown of Leaves, 42 x 42 in., oil
Image courtesy of Connie Borup. A Good Place to Look, 42 x 42 in., oil
Image courtesy of Connie Borup. Looking Through, 42 x 42 in., oil
Image courtesy of Connie Borup. Leaf Dance, 45 x 52 in., oil
Image courtesy of Connie Borup. Glory, 52 x 40 in., oil
"The Indian Summer, the dead Summer's soul." - Mary Clemmer, Presence