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Indepth Arts News:
"Elaine Kurtz: Alluvial Paintings"
2000-03-18 until 2000-05-29
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Washington, DC,
USA United States of America
The series title refers both to the deposits of earth and sand carried by waves or water, and to
the artist’s creative process. Like Jackson Pollock’s poured paintings, Kurtz’s heavily loaded
and tumultuous surfaces are produced on the floor of her studio. She pours and brushes
layers of paint and other materials onto the surface of the canvas. Moving the canvas back
and forth to disperse the built-up areas, Kurtz creates a composition that mirrors the patterns of
accretion and erosion that are visible in natural topographic formations.
Today, contemporary painters incorporate into their work media as various as flour, salt,
perfume and chocolate in an effort to challenge our expectations and to invigorate the
traditional function of painting, says Paige Turner, Assistant Curator of Exhibitions at the
Corcoran Gallery of Art. Like these artists, Kurtz employs sand, stone and minerals as
equivalents to paint in order to reinvest her canvases with a broader basis for interpretation.
A native of Philadelphia, Elaine Kurtz lives and works in New York. She has had numerous solo
exhibitions in galleries throughout the northeast. Her work is included in collections at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and
Sculpture Garden, the Portland Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Herbert F.
Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University.
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