Christine Garvey is an artist and coach based in Austin, TX. Her paintings and installations have been exhibited internationally, including exhibitions with Galerie Circulaire (Montreal), Sur La Montagne Galerie (Berlin), Jules Maidoff Gallery (Florence), International Print Center (New York) and The Contemporary Austin. Garvey’s work has been recognized with a Fulbright Research Grant (2016), a Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center (2020), and an Artist Relief Grant from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, United States Artists, and Creative Capital (2021). She's taught at the University of Texas at Austin, School of The Art Institute of Chicago, and Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation. She writes and speaks about ideas that impact contemporary artists, including scarcity, endurance, and financial stability. Her work has been featured in Creative Mornings Global, Brooklyn Magazine, and The Creative Independent.

As an artist, I’m interested in ruin. I draw and sculpt as a way to process my fears around the body’s vulnerabilities and inevitable failings. My work from the last four years deals specifically with my anxieties around ruin and motherhood - the transformation of flesh, the violence of birth, and the collapse of identity that comes with making and mothering another. I’m influenced by classical Italian depictions of motherhood: the grotesque elongation of limbs in Parmigianino’s Madonna with the Long Neck, the bleeding breasts in Artemisia Gentileschi’s Mother and Child among others. My work is also influenced by the natural world - how wolves, snakes, and other animals transform as they become mothers. I find something exciting in the idea that mothering brings forth the monstrous within each of us. I’m interested in the unusual power that emerges when we become our most grotesque, animate selves. It’s through copying and re-imagining various depictions of motherhood that I begin to find my own definitions. I come to terms with the complexity of such an experience - the violence and tenderness, the sensuality and fierceness, and the generative and destructive nature of motherhood.

Exhibition:

Mythology/Matriarchy