Beverly McIver, Dorothy P's Red Sunglasses, 2013. Oil on canvas. 36 x 36 inches. Image via bettycuninghamgallery.com.
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June 27, 2013 –
August 9, 2013
Opening reception:
Thursday, June 27, 6-8pm
541 West 25th Street
New York, NY
Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of
paintings by Beverly McIver, her second
exhibition at the gallery. The artist will be present for the
opening reception on Thursday, June 27, 2013.
McIver’s paintings are a voyage in self-revelation from her
earlier self-portraits in white face (the clown) to black face (confronting the
black stereotype) to the current unmasking of her skin, her body and her
feelings as she struggles to find herself as an artist and African-American.
The exhibition includes 12 paintings, primarily autobiographical
in nature. McIver’s paintings focus on her close friends, her family or
herself. On view are two paintings of the well-known choreographer,
Bill T. Jones, bowed as if in dance; a painting of a close friend, Annah, nude and pregnant; and
a portrait of another friend, Dorothy,
at rest and in recovery from illness. In addition there are several self-portraits,
some painfully deliberate, bare and honest and others playful and masked. One
self-portrait shows McIver nude, post breast-reduction surgery, while another, Turning
50, McIver sports a birthday/clown hat and big smile, while in another
McIver stares upward, hiding behind red rimmed dark glasses.
McIver’s work can be found in a number of public collections, including
the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento,
CA; Duke University, Durham, NC; the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC;
and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC. She has been the
recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, most notably the Louis Comfort
Tiffany Award, 2003-04; Marie Walsh Sharpe Fellowship, 2003 and again in
2012-2013; Radcliffe Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
at Harvard University, 2002; Creative Capital Grant, 2002; John Simon
Guggenheim Fellowship, 2001; Anonymous Was A Woman Grant, 2000; and North
Carolina Arts Council Visual Artist Fellowship, 1994. As a
finalist in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, McIver’s work is
currently on view at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC through
February 2014. In December of 2011, HBO presented a feature length documentary
about the life and painting of Beverly McIver, titled Raising Renee, directed and written by Jeanne Jordan
and Steven Ascher, and produced by West City Films.
Beverly McIver was born in Greensboro, NC and received a BA in
Painting and Drawing from North Carolina Central University and a MFA in
Painting and Drawing from Pennsylvania State University. In 2007 she
received an Honorary Doctorate from North Carolina Central University and has
been a Professor of Art there since the same year. The artist lives
and works in Durham, NC.
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