Stay the Course by Catherine Haggarty
Solo Exhibition
As part of the 2023/2024 VASD Program series, RMCAD is pleased to present Catherine Haggarty’s solo exhibition Stay the Course, featuring recent paintings and drawings in conversation with works created since 2014. Haggarty uses a range of media in her work including airbrush acrylic, oil paint, stencils, oil sticks, wax crayons, and graphite to create images with multiple perspectives of the artist’s life and artistic process. By exhibiting past and present artworks together, Stay the Course reveals the iterative and self-referential nature of Haggarty’s practice. Like a story within a story, or standing between two mirrors, images repeat and echo in other works. Materials that express the artist’s hand and images of personal items like cats, sneakers, drawings, and furniture, recursively appear in her work, linking her life to pictures. The artworks are about the work of making art, how that experience permeates her life, and how her life permeates her art.
“Stay the course” was an often-used phrase by Haggarty’s late father encouraging the idea of trusting the process and one’s goals. In addition to being an homage to him, another repeating theme found in Haggarty’s work, the phrase also embodies Haggarty’s trust and dedication to her process. Trust that each drawing will lead to the next painting, each point of inspiration will lead to the next idea, despite a range of subjects. The dedication spurred from her training as a runner and former college basketball player evokes an athleticism that she applies to her studio practice, both mentally and sometimes in her subjects of sneakers. Haggarty’s diligence, attention, and love for working intertwine and fuel her life as an artist. This exhibition celebrates and confronts the practical experiences of sustaining and evolving an art practice.
ABOUT CATHERINE HAGGARTY
Brooklyn-based artist Catherine Haggarty creates paintings and drawings that pay attention to domestic objects, spaces, and habits through pictural strategies that employ multiple perspectives. Personal objects and things like animals, sneakers, beds, floors, and drawings, appear in her work, linking her life to pictures. With complex compositions and wistful color palettes, these works consider the very function of images in our personal and public lives including how we perceive our environment, process images, and record information.
Haggarty’s paintings and curatorial work have been reviewed by and featured in Bomb Magazine, Artnet, Hyperallergic, Art Forum, Two Coats of Paint, Brooklyn Magazine, The New York Times, Art Maaze Magazine, Art Spiel, Pep Talks for Artists, Sound and Vision Podcast and The Observer.
Solo & Two Person exhibitions include Untitled Miami, Lorin Gallery, LA, Geary Contemporary (NYC), Massey Klein Gallery (NYC), This Friday Next Friday (Brooklyn), Bloomsburg University (PA), and Look and Listen in Marseille France. Select group exhibitions include The PIT (LA), Badr El Jundi (Madrid, Spain), Mindy Solomon (Miami, FL), Andrew Rafcaz (Chicago, IL), Hesse Flatow (NYC), Mrs (Maspeth, NY) and McBride Contemporary in Montreal, Canada.
Haggarty earned her M.F.A from Mason Gross, Rutgers University in 2011. She is the Founder, Owner, and Executive Director of The Canopy Program which is a one-year mentorship program within the NYC Crit Club (which Haggarty co-founded with artist Hilary Doyle in 2017).
In the Spring of 2024, Catherine will be the Teiger Mentor for the Arts at Cornell AAP MFA and is currently also a Visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute. Additional teaching experience includes Rutgers BFA, Hofstra University, The School of Visual Arts & The Fashion Institute of New York.
EXHIBITION RUN
February 6 - March 22, 2024
OPENING RECEPTION
Tuesday, February 6th, 2024, from 5:00 pm - 7:30 pm.
GALLERY HOURS
Monday through Friday, 11 am - 4 pm.
PRESS
February 6 - March 22, 2024
ABOUT THE PHILIP J. STEELE GALLERY
Named in honor of RMCAD’s founder, the Philip J. Steele Gallery features dynamic and innovative work from contemporary artists and designers, RMCAD alumni, current students, and faculty. Open to the public, these galleries serve as a place to foster critical discourse around art and design for the RMCAD and broader communities by presenting challenging, educational, and significant exhibitions and projects. The Philip J. Steele Gallery is located on RMCAD’s campus at 1600 Pierce Street, Denver, CO 80214.