Neverne Covington: Into the Mystic
On View: July 11 – September 23
Opening Reception: July 11th, 5pm to 8pm
Continuing a tradition at the Morean, we are proud to present last year’s Margaret Murphy Steward Best of Show winner, Neverne Covington. In addition to a cash prize, the winning artist receives a solo show in our gallery to coincide with the following year’s members show. Neverne is the 14th artist to receive this opportunity.
About Neverne:
Neverne Covington’s drawings, prints, paintings and sculpture explore childhood, language, landscape, memory, and the gothic south. Her work has been exhibited at the Tampa Museum of Art, the Brevard Museum of Art, the State Capital, the Florida Museum for Women Artists in Deland, Florida and various venues throughout Florida, Georgia and Alabama.
She recently returned from an artist residency at the VCCA Moulin a Nef in Auvillar, France. Covington was born in Laurelton, New York, grew up in Florida, and attended City & Guilds College in London, England. She graduated from Eckerd College and has maintained her studio in downtown Saint Petersburg for three decades.
Artist Statement:
I use oil paint, oil sticks and wax on canvas to create my work. I start with small intimate studies and expand to larger works, often executing several paintings at the same time. I look for the dialogue as my paintings speak to one another. Using progressive layers and glazes, some transparent, some thick and opaque, each brushstroke or mark becomes the topography of the surface. Each layer informs the next.
Direct observation and immersion in the natural world, informs my work and determines its themes: permanence, impermanence, and transience. My paintings discover the tangible and intangible forces that form matter from which our being and our very nature emerge.
Rhythm, pattern, and repetition dictate my process and the direction each work will take. The viscosity and consistency of the mediums enhance the work as I smear, drag, rub to create volume and form. The oil sticks, paint, and wax, combined with the shimmering transparent glazes, produce depth. The history of painting, and my study of it, informs each mark I make.
Painting makes me pay attention. It entices me into the mystery of nature and the landscape of memory. It is a way of bringing order to the world I know and to the preconscious world of which I know so little. I am fascinated with what came before us, with humankind’s relationship to our living, breathing world. In my work I strive to reveal nature’s known, unknown and unknowable entities. It is my humble hope that audience will respond to these resonances.
