Details:
① Artwork:
Kitten Hunting
This oil stick painting features an animal silhouette in the center, suggesting a narrative moment just before an animal runs away. The composition limits viewers' perspective to a thinly painted and delicate chair in the foreground. The chair, a long-standing subject in art history, stands in for a person—perhaps suggesting some part of ourselves that watches animals move around and with us. Haggarty employs a combination of oil stick and air brush to render the fur of an animal or rug, which softens this painting and makes it more relatable to viewers while still retaining a haunting sensibility.
Catherine Haggarty has been investigating painting through the lens of drawing for a decade. The artist's work frequently depicts animals and interiors, as well as people resting at home and other spaces. Haggarty uses an airbrush gun, wax crayons and oil stick to explore mark-making—as well as the infallible and idiosyncratic ways in which drawing and writing relate to painting. Drawing from the Edo period of Japanese art, Indian painting and Indigenous art, the artist’s experience as a lecturer and critic have influenced her desire to honor elements of neglected art history in her compositions.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Catherine Haggarty’s paintings explore forgotten elements of art history in their depiction of animals, interiors and human subjects resting in their home. Using an airbrush gun alongside wax crayons and oil sticks, the artist’s work explores the idiosyncratic ways in which drawing and writing relate to painting. Haggarty employs pictorial strategies studied and taught in her seminars—drawing influence from diverse sources, including the Edo period of Japan, Indian painting and indigenous art.
BIO:
Catherine Haggarty received an MFA from Mason Gross, Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 2011.
Solo exhibitions of Haggarty’s work have taken place at: Massey Klein Gallery in New York City; This Friday Next Friday in Brooklyn, New York; Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania; One Main Window in New York City; One River School of Art and Design Gallery in Bergen County, New Jersey; and Look and Listen in Marseille, France.
Haggarty’s paintings and curatorial work have been reviewed by and featured in: Bomb Magazine, Artnet, Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint, Brooklyn Magazine, The New York Times, Maake Magazine, Art Maaze Magazine, Art Spiel, Final Friday Podcast, Sound and Vision Podcast, The Black and White Project, Curating Contemporary’s book Eraser, and The Observer.
Haggarty has been a visiting artist and critic at: MICA in Baltimore, Maryland (2022); the University of Connecticut MFA in Storrs, Connecticut (2022); Pratt BFA in Brooklyn, New York (2022); the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon (2021); Boston University MFA in Boston, Massachusetts (2021); SUNY Purchase MFA in Purchase, New York (2020); Hunter MFA in New York City (2020); Denison University in Granville, Ohio (2020); and Brooklyn College MFA in Brooklyn, New York (2019).
In 2018, Haggarty was the Anderson Endowed Lecturer at Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania.
Haggarty lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, where the artist is an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts and is the co-founder and director of the NYC Crit Club.
