Juror's Comments - New American Paintings

Noteworthy:
Megan
Dirks Juror’s Pick p44
Megan Dirks’s worlds contain inexplicable spaces that feel familiar
yet are so far removed from our daily experience that it is impos-
sible to imagine moving through them. Scattered elements in unac-
customed orientations evoke disparate and contradictory textures.
Here, the brush touches the surface in manifold ways: tender and
bold, nervous, and fluid. The natural environment is intertwined
with architectural components on disorienting and shifting planes.
There are walls to walk up, ceilings to lie down on, and floors to fall
through. Dirks’s paintings are quiet. If we were to imagine sound
here, it would be a deep, muffled hum, and her awkward spaces
convey equally strange emotions.
Ellen
Siebers Editor’s Pick p132
The figures in Ellen Siebers’s paintings are simultaneously inte-
grated with their environment and achingly detached. To a large
extent, this is exactly what Siebers intends. She is interested in the
relationship between man and nature, and, more specifically, in how
man positions himself in relation to nature. Her paintings suggest
vague, inscrutable narratives, but their weight derives more from
a successful conjuring of mood, then from storytelling. Ultimately,
the characters in Siebers’s paintings are stand-ins for her—they are
vessels of self-exploration.
Winners:
MFA Annual
Competition 2009
Juror: The Alice and Harris Weston Director and Chief Curator,
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH
Samanth Bittman | Caetlynn Booth | Just Bower | Derrick Burnett | Kyle William Butler
Karen E. Cleveland | Taylor Crawley | Kim Deakins | Megan Dirks | Kurt Franz
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi | Laura Krifka | Mary NaRee Laube | Jon Lee | Stuart Lorimer
Kimberlay A. Manfredi | Daniel McFarlane | Andrew D. Moeller | Katrina Neumann
J. Sloane Snure Paullus | John Guy Petruzzi | George Pfau | Brian Porray | Faith Purvey
Craig Rempfer | Tony Rich | Clinton Ricketts | Andrew C. Rieder | Dan Schein
Christina Shurts | Ellen Siebers | Rachel Sitkin | Bret Slater | Tim Stark | Nishiki Tayui
Chris Trueman | Robin Walker | Rebecca L. Wallace | Nathan Thomas Wilson | Michelle Yu
The following section is presented in alphabetical order.
Biographical information has been edited.
Prices for available work may be found on page 172.
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