Commissioners' Choice

Joellyn T. Duesberry: A Painter's Path

January 9, 2020 - March 28, 2020

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 18, 2020 from 6:00pm-7:30pm 

Artist Information

Joellyn T. Duesberry (1944-2016), a self-taught landscape oil painter, painted the west for decades, establishing her reputation as a Western American artist; a regionalist with a clear focus. This reputation overlooks the works she has created around the world, and discounts Duesberry’s self-identification as a modernist. A 1986 National Endowment for the Arts Painting Grant afforded Duesberry the opportunity to study under California modernist Richard Diebenkorn for a month, changing the trajectory of her career as an artist. The time she spent with Diebenkorn prompted her to move from Manhattan to Colorado, where she began to explore the geometry of the Western landscape. Originally an abstract painter, Duesberry’s work evolved, revealing the tension between illusion in depth and flat patterning on the surface of a canvas, avoiding balance or resolve either way. Coming full circle, Duesberry’s later work began to isolate the elements of the theme that she found most fascinating, resulting in an image that is the absolute essence of the design.