{"id":7332,"date":"2018-05-19T11:23:08","date_gmt":"2018-05-19T15:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=7332"},"modified":"2021-04-05T08:04:28","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T12:04:28","slug":"nicole-duennebier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/05\/19\/nicole-duennebier\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicole Duennebier’s Sumptuous Paintings Evoke The Old Masters\u2014If They Painted Oozing Piles Of Meat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicole Duennebier<\/a> is one of the most sumptuous painters around. Her new paintings evoke the elegance of 16th century Dutch still-lifes and the fecundity of French rococo garden scenes. But there\u2019s something strange going on in her landscapes and still-lifes. Like the piles of meat at the center of some of the scenes\u2014dripping with ooze.<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely want it to be pulling out desire through things that are repellant,\u201d says the Malden painter whose exhibition \u201cView into the Fertile Country\u201d<\/a> begins with a reception from 5 to 7 this evening, May 19<\/a>, at 13 Forest Gallery in Arlington and continues to July 13. \u201cPushing people to find something attractive that they wouldn\u2019t normally is always something I\u2019m working towards. I think artists are always looking for something people haven\u2019t found beautiful yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Nicole<\/a>
Nicole Duennebier in her studio in Malden, May 12, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Duennebier grew up in East Hampton, Connecticut, earned her bachelor of fine arts degree from the Maine College of Art in Portland in 2005, moved to Boston in 2008, and now works as a receptionist for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce\u2014where she brought paint pens, black paint and brown paper to sketch some of the drawings in the show during lunch breaks. She sometimes collaborates with her younger sister Caitlin Duennebier, whose cartoony style stands in contrast to Nicole\u2019s old master chiaroscuros. Duennebier admits to \u201can incredible devotion to them [old master paintings] in some way, an embarrassing devotion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Nicole<\/a>
Nicole Duennebier, “Still Life with Grapes and Black Mold,” acrylic on panel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Duennebier\u2019s earlier paintings often seemed to look underwater\u2014tracing back to her interest in the coastal ecosystems of Maine. They suggested curling ribbon lines, the rippled fabric of old time collars, sea anemones and urchins, jellyfish, mushrooms and shelf molds, swarms of fish eggs or pearls or grapes. Everything appeared heaped up like coral reefs or composting middens, emerging from darkness evoking a cave or the cosmic void or under the sea, beautiful and yet rife with decay, at once strange and ecstatic.<\/p>\n

\"Nicole<\/a>
Nicole Duennebier, “Still Life with Meat Pile,” acrylic on panel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cStill life has always been rot. They\u2019ve always had that fuzz and decay on things. And that\u2019s interesting to paint, too,\u201d Duennebier says. French rococo artists \u201cwould use old grottos and decay, use little bits of tarnish and mold in it and that became part of the design. That was something that was in my work, something that you\u2019re programmed to recoil from that is decorative. And, of course, grotesque means grotto-esque.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the new show, Duennebier has brightened the surroundings, more directly evoking still-lifes or landscapes populated by gnarled trees. Things turn weird\u2014like some alien energy has taken hold and caused the surroundings to mutate.<\/p>\n

To increase the sense of depth and verisimilitude, Duennebier says, \u201cI was making clay sculptures to work from because I thought my paintings were getting very flat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Nicole<\/a>
Nicole Duennebier, “Folded Landscape At Dusk,” acrylic on panel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One painting resembles a still-life of meat (\u201cThe clay form I had I would grease it down with [mineral] oil so I could see the way the light would shine on it\u201d). Other paintings seem to be landscapes with strange piles of what seem to be meat in the middle. She says, \u201cI didn\u2019t realize the meat looked kind of gross to many people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to talk about them as gross when I\u2019ve finished the paintings because you\u2019re so in it,\u201d Duennebier says. \u201c\u2026I still stay fairly pretty on the surface, I think. And I think that comes from not being able to be super cynical about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Nicole<\/a>
Nicole Duennebier, “Landscape with Pink Folds,” acrylic on panel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Nicole<\/a>
Nicole Duennebier’s studio in Malden, May 12, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Nicole<\/a>
Nicole Duennebier’s studio in Malden, May 12, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicole Duennebier is one of the most sumptuous painters around. Her new paintings evoke the elegance of 16th century Dutch still-lifes and the fecundity of French rococo garden scenes. But there\u2019s something strange going on in her landscapes and still-lifes. Like the piles of meat at the center of some of the scenes\u2014dripping with ooze. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[362,83,41,846],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7332"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7348,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332\/revisions\/7348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}