EXHIBITION IMAGES | PRESS RELEASE
May 6 – 29, 2023 | Opening reception: Saturday May 6, 4 – 6 pm
79 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, New York
Emily Pettigrew, Old School House, 2023, Acrylic and graphite on panel, 18 x 24 inches
Halsey McKay presents Wheel of the Year, Emily Pettigrew’s first exhibition with the gallery. A representational painter, whose work is distinguished by sparseness, subtlety, and timelessness, Pettigrew’s pictures emanate a quiet reverence for both history and nature. Pettigrew’s narrative paintings, which depict lone or small groups of figures, landscapes, and American architecture, were defined by her formative years in Maine. Pettigrew explains: “My love for the starkness of the landscape of my childhood is reflected in a spartanism in my work. My foundational principle of painting, is the removal of excess parts—a paring down to an image’s most beautiful elements.” Currently based in the Catskill Mountains, Pettigrew’s subject matter has become increasingly imbued with the regional history of the area.
In the five new paintings on view Pettigrew continues to depict her native Maine and her current home in the Catskill Mountains, in paintings that are set in the regions’ rural villages. Pettigrew chooses her subjects from life, capturing people and places that appear relatively unchanged by the advent of industrialization. In paintings such as Old School House, The Kelp Gatherer and Out on the Ice, Pettigrew weaves a mix of past and present that suggests both the comforting and disorienting nature of time.
Emily Pettigrew was born in 1991 in York, Maine. She holds a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. Recent exhibitions include Pablo’s Birthday, NY; Monya Rowe, NY; The Hole, NY; Wilder Gallery, London, UK; Rod Bianco, Oslo, NO; Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm, SE; and Able Baker Contemporary, Portland, ME, among others. Pettigrew will have a solo show at Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY in 2025.