Christine Vaillancourt

For a number of years I have been using archetypal forms in my paintings which suggested ancient and modern symbols. My paintings focus on merging two chronologically divergent and experientially juxtaposed periods of human time, the primitive and the industrial.

In my most recent work, the geometry, laid out in grid formation, has been simplified to give strength to the repetition of the shapes sheeted between thick wax-like or encaustic-like layers of acrylic medium. The layers of patterned forms may reference designs found in African textiles, punched holes on old computer cards, architectural or industrial elements, or 1950's patterns.

Squares, rectangles, circles, ovals, or dots arranged in irregular grids or rows, give order to an imperfect orthogonal format. These layers of repetitive mechanical motifs, which are submerged beneath heavily applied translucent layers of tinted acrylic mediums, shadow the others that pop the surface or float on top. Some of these elements appear to hover in front of the painting adding to the literal and visual depth. The result is a quasi-archeological mapping of the surface giving a sense of time passing or a potential of new discoveries accented by ghost images or shadows of the past.

Several dualities can be seen in my work: randomness and order, permanence and flux, primitive and industrial, analytical and visceral. My work is a study of the relationship of time, constant transition, and the natural, human connection of elemental geometry as metaphor.

Christine Vaillancourt received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her MAE from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has exhibited widely in the United States as well as Toronto, Canada and Taipei, Taiwan. Christine had a one-person show at the Creiger-Dane Gallery in Boston in 1999 and, most recently, at the Andrea Schwartz Gallery in San Francisco in June 2002. Her work was included in the Fuller Museum Triennial, 1999 ‚ 2000 and is presently in a traveling museum exhibition. Christine was featured for the third time in the New American Painting Magazine in 2000. She has been invited to have a one-person exhibition at the Newport Art Museum, Newport, Rhode Island, spring of 2004. Among her many corporate clients are ITT, MCI, SAP America; Nordstrom in California, Texas, and Florida; Essex Investments in Boston; Hale and Dorr in New York City; and CSC Index in New York and Chicago.

If you are interested in any of these works, feel free to email info@creiger-dane.com.

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