Off-white painting with 19th c. handwriting, gesture and ruffed grouse.

detail: Specimens (with Ruffed Grouse), 2016, oil on three panels, 24 x 72 inches overall

“Viewers…become immersed in the paintings’ visual appeal, with their strata of color and detail. Courtenaye reveals that for her, the richly tinted layers represent periods of time, and looking through the variable density and translucency of surface is analogous to peering back into the 19th century—a metaphor for the untouchable yet ever present past.”
Sandy Harthorn, former Curator of Art, Boise Art Museum

Detail of painting with 19th c. handwriting, signatures and kingfisher.

paintings volume 6

Avian Witness. With imagery and methodology derived from my previous works, this series contemplates primordial systems—such as bird migration, magnetic fields and wind—and their relationship to manmade patterns on the land. Source materials, some embedded beneath layers, are wide ranging, including the gestures of penmanship, my pen-and-ink drawings of birds, and aerial landscape views.


paintings volume 5

In this series, my interest in the evolution of written language—encompassing hieroglyphics, rebus riddles, and phonograms—led me to incorporate common Western birds into otherwise abstract works. The paintings seek some sort of equivalence between letterforms, various species of birds, and pure gesture.

Detail of painting with 19th c. handwriting, ink splot and gesture.

paintings volume 4

Exploring parallels between drawing/painting/handwriting/markmaking, this group of paintings magnifies intimate handdrawn marks into more explosive gestures. Bold brushy lines, derived from cursive letterforms, become conduits of space, providing glimpses into the many strata that lie beneath the surface of each painting. Several paintings open up and complicate the stripped down efficiency of texting acronyms.

Detail of orange painting with 19th c. handwriting, signatures and gesture.

paintings volume 3

This series builds on the previous by introducing broad hand-drawn or painted gestures to reflect or play with transferred letterform fragments. The paintings, appearing abstract from a distance, are map-like upon closer view. Overall patterning emerges from repeating linear elements.

Detail of tan-brown painting with 19th c. handwriting, signatures and gesture.

paintings volume 2

In this group of paintings, I am especially interested in ferreting out instances of deviation from Victorian writing standards. These tiny gestures express an improvisatory spirit at odds with strict rules of stylistic conformity. Here one can see the human impulse to let the mind stray, with pen in hand. My handdrawn meandering lines play with appropriated text and scribbles within each painting.

Detail of painting with 19th c. handwriting, geometry lesson and gesture.

paintings volume 1

Based on my exploration of 19th-century vernacular penmanship, these works contain vestiges of elementary mark-making. Alphabets, signatures, equations, doodles serve as counterpoints to my looser treatment of line, edge and space. The text is merged into the overall atmosphere of the paint, resulting in works evoking both landscape and pages of books. While we think of doodles as free from any rules, one can see an indelible residue of proper penmanship. The tension between forced conformity and unfettered meandering plays itself out in these paintings.

Mint-green painting with 19th c. handwriting, text and gesture.

small panel paintings

Like keyhole views of the larger paintings, these works pack energy into a small scale, using my signature vocabulary of dense black imprinted scrawls, letters, numbers, and signatures. A wide palette of hues also drives the compositions, as I can make radical color changes quickly at this size. These 12-inch square panels are often installed in grids, columns, or rows.