Eleanor Conover writes,”My work investigates physical surface, speculative architecture, and a questioning of representation in environmental space. These paintings begin as geometric line drawings that I build into non-rectangular structures, supporting a dyed canvas ground and subsequent layers of paint. The irregular nature of each painting’s support emphasizes the perimeter, yet each form remains singular, invoking but not settling on topographical and bodily subjects. I titled a recent show “As the Crow Flies”, an idiom that, like the paintings, contains suggestions of orientation (geographically and individually), curvature, and the refusal of a form of abstraction that conforms to a strict cartesian grid. Some paintings assert their presence by bending away from the wall like an inflated lung or wind-filled kite; others enact expected flatness with a thin, uniform depth.
The work converses with historical painting languages, bringing open-ended, process-based work into conversation with a more perceptually-rooted understanding of depicting light and space. The paintings also contain idiosyncratic material play and gesture through the inclusion of marble stones, acrylic image transfer, and transparent linen and polyester that reveals the internal sculptural structure of the support. By alluding to both weights and and levity, edges and fragments, I push up against what waiting can “collect”, hold, or be, and expend ideas about the relationship between a given subjects’s structure and content.”
Conover’s work will appear in Caldbeck’s WILD THING – opening September 5th, 2025
photo credits: All images courtesy of the artist. Photography by and.again._docu
