online

Peter Estey Fine Art is pleased to present an online exhibition of works by Rothesay, New Brunswick artist Catharine McAvity (1915-1999) from March 22 – April 5, 2023.

For more information, and to view the exhibition, please go here.

This exhibition comes at a time when several factors make a re-examination of McAvity’s work important, including a renewed interest in contemporary landscape painting by a younger generation of international painters and a broader societal consideration of female artists that have been under-recognized due to systemic barriers. The works in this exhibition consist of several watercolours and two major works on canvas from the artist’s estate.

McAvity’s work exists as a parallel document to the traditional Canadian landscape canon, situated in a particular lineage starting with David Milne (1882-1953) and developed alongside K.M. Graham (1913-2008). These three artists share a lightness of approach while utilizing colour and form to negotiate landscape in an abstract manner. In the work of Catharine McAvity, natural forms are rendered down to their basic elements of line, shape, and colour. The formal gestures constructing the paintings, although referring to a source, become abstracted entities unto themselves. There is effortlessness in McAvity’s work, a simplicity of approach that is calm, confident, and mysterious.