ATHENS, GA.- The College of Environment and Design at the University of Georgia presents a solo exhibition of the work of Corrine Colarusso: Stirred Fiction.
Her large scale paintings redefine the genre of landscape and offer rich, contemplative experiences. Detailed and layered in curious ways, radiating with luminous color and wild imagination, Colarusso's paintings depict the complexities of our interconnectedness and estrangement with the natural environment.
She writes about her work:
In my work, nature, landscape, the bright symbolic sunrise, the gloaming, weather conditions, paint and color, become a stirred fiction. Less about verisimilitude, yet true to the experience of looking and being there, I make images that merge the materiality of paint with illusion and abstraction. There is a metaphorical, fugitive quality to my work, that depicts not a comfortable nature, but a shifting one that acknowledges we live in a time when technology seems increasingly natural to us and nature itself less so. And because of this, landscape, nature, plant life, however beautiful and seemingly familiar, provides a speculative reality. We are connected and distanced to the patterns and signals found within the language of rocks, reeds, and vistas that glow. My paintings depict this duality that courses through even the most benign landscapes, as speculations on what is observed.
Originally from Boston, MA, Corrine Colarusso has spent much of her career as an artist and professor of painting in Atlanta. Her work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, most recently the Newport Art Museum in Rhode Island (2014) and the Macon Museum of Arts and Sciences in Macon, Georgia (2013). She holds a B.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts, and an M.F.A. and from Tyler School of Art of Temple University. She was a Fellow at the Yale Summer school of Art and Music. Several grants and awards including a Guggenheim, Mellon, and MacDowell Colony Fellowship have supported her work. She has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome, the Cortona Program of the University of Georgia, and the Ossabaw Island Project. In the 70’s she traveled to India and Nepal on a Fulbright Hayes Research Grant. Her work has been shown in many solo and group exhibitions and is included in numerous public, private, and corporate collections.
