'Courtney Miller Bellairs’ pictures speak eloquently of
absence: signs of departed figures, empty streets, shadows of unseen trees, and
blank squares. Her art is formally sophisticated and yet reductive: primary
colors, basic shapes, even “ABC”s are the “building blocks” of pictures that
are organized into grids. They are always structurally sound; Courtney is a
graduate of the Yale School of Architecture, so it should come as no surprise
that her paintings are so well-built. But despite their timeless order,
rigorous geometry, and Hopperesque silence, her pictures are never austere or
static: they are activated by subtle imbalances, shifting reflections,
dialectical relationships between edifices, and the rhythmic interplay of
masses and voids; and, in her recent, conceptual work, by the ripple of the
hand-sewn fabrics.'
March 9, 2012
Victor G. Katz Professor, History of Art Coordinator, Liberal Arts Program Holyoak Community College