January 14 - February 7, 2022
Nicole Duennebier received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Maine College of Art with a major in painting. Her BFA thesis work was most influenced by research into the coastal ecosystems of Maine. In 2006 she was awarded the Monhegan Island Artists Residency. On the island she continued her work with sea life, and perceived a natural connection between the darkness and intricacy of undersea regions and the aesthetic of 16th-century Dutch still-life painting.
In 2008 Duennebier moved to the Boston area, and now lives and works in Malden. She is a 2016 Massachusetts Cultural Council Painting Fellow and her work can be found in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and New Britain Museum of American Art. Writing about Bright Beast, her 2013 solo show at the Lilypad in Cambridge, Cate McQuaid of the Boston Globe said Duennebier’s “technical mastery gives the artist what she needs to seduce the viewer; the content lowers the boom.” Duennebier has also been featured in the Portland Press Herald, Art New England and Hi-Fructose Magazine, among other publications. Duennebier has worked alongside her sister Caitlin Duennebier for a number of collaborative exhibitions, most recently “Love Superior, a Death Supreme” at Simmons University. Earlier this year, she was featured in a solo exhibition, Pushing Painting, at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University.
Title: Feast
Through painting with attention to detail, I've become accustomed to the fact that nature itself, or anything living really, never totally allows you to have a perfectly idealized experience. Everything is constantly spewing, dripping, rotting a little. But there is an odd sumptuousness to textural attractions and repulsions co-mingling. I've always felt the dutch term "pronkstilleven" for ornate or ostentatious still life is synonymous with this feeling of strange attraction. Beyond vanitas paintings' more distinct moral symbols, the pronksilleven derives glamour equally from rot as it does golden riches and overflows with it. The irresistible nature of wasteful abundance. Everything heaved together, almost self-arranged into a glimmering feast.
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