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Connie Noyes

BIO

 

Connie Noyes is an award-winning painter whose work has been exhibited in Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and abroad in London, Florence, Paris and Malaysia. In the 4th Annual Florence Biennale in 2003, she took a 5th place prize in painting from a field of 500 painters. She has been selected for prestigious residencies, including the Emaar International Art Symposium in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2005); the Thupelo International Workshop in Cape Town, South Africa (2005); and the 6th Annual International Symposium of Art in Bulgaria (2006). Noyes’ work is in a number of public and private collections including that of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she earned her MFA.

 

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Working in multiple formats and media, Connie Noyes is an original with a unique vision grounded in her distinctive imagination. Whether she is painting, photographing, or constructing, Noyes' creations are inspired by the irregular shapes and involved lines that dance through her mind's eye and that she integrates into alluring patterns through disciplined composition.

Noyes is at her best when she goes full tilt, layering her surfaces and compounding forms into dense abstractions that draw the viewer into the complex interconnections that she stages. Although Noyes' productions are suggestive of emotion and meaning, they work primarily on a perceptual, rather than a psychological or conceptual level, by beckoning the viewer into the systems of incomplete order that emerge from the moment of "chaos" in her creative process.

Among the rising generation of artists, Noyes is among the few who are not derivative and who take a welcome fresh and individual approach.

 

-Michael Weinstein, 2010

 

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Connie Noyes is a mature girl painter.

The energy is insane. The aggressive push to explore is palpable. The results fabulous.

Of course with a pursuit like hers, Noyes sometimes misses - and misses big, but she scores big more often than not. She takes sizeable risks and doesn’t bemoan the failures, learns always and invariably kicks ass. Her drive and excitement permeate the work.

Often a viewer encountering a single work gushes. Seeing several can overwhelm. She’s scurrying in multiple directions simultaneously. From the girly, translucent pinks and gossamer whites that make me feel like a happy voyeur to the overlaid black paintings that allude to darker thoughts and ostensibly a comment on society, this is an artist who loves to paint.

And though paint is everywhere it isn’t all there is. There are a lot of remnants, found materials, garbage, detritus; the castoffs we throw away, Noyes picks up and transforms, though compositional juxtaposition and smears of paint, to worthy constructs of all sorts of sizes.

Noyes is a seemingly soft (don’t count on it) a blonde who has danced most of her life. Sometimes she looks elfin and the work that pours out of her body belies her demur demeanor. Her work is powerful, full of soul and physicality.

Earlier this year I blind juried (I couldn’t see the names or gender of the artists whose art I was evaluating) a show for the Indianapolis Art Center and included a piece of Noyes’. I don’t know about you, but when I look at art I get a psychological and/or sociological portrait of the artist and extrapolate from that information to a dialog with the art. I was pretty certain a 70-something year-old Black man did the hulking 7 x 10 foot canvas I’d included. The way it riffed on urban issues could only have been done by someone who’d spent time sleeping in alleys or under bridges. It had that kind of authenticity pouring from it. I was shocked when I learned the piece was by Connie Noyes.

Her work is like that; lush, rich, authenticate and contains polar opposites. Not often in one piece, but frequently from one piece to the next. There is always a love of process and materials, a feeling that in making it she’s in there up to her elbows.
Noyes is an artist of deep thoughts, concerns and experience that she mines daily to push us to better know ourselves and the diversity we all touch but rarely delve into with the same honesty Noyes does.

Lots of artwork informs the artist about themselves (Noyes’ does) and lots of other art is didactic - expressing a point of view (Noyes’ does that too) but very few do both. Noyes is special, pushing hard(er), with brave honesty and vulnerability. She’s on top of her game, making more art and better art than most. She’s driven. And we are the fortunate benefactors.

 

-Paul Klein, 2010
Chicago based curator, critic and writer