About The Artist

Connie Noyes is a Chicago based artist who works in multiple formats and media to create alluring paintings from utilitarian and discarded materials. The surfaces—luscious and rich with texture—are coated in resin capturing the energy and experimentation that is an ever-present part of the production process. Regardless of the form, the work reveals a deep vulnerability; layers of everyday life that are deeply rooted in emotion, thought, and soulfulness. 

 

Ms. Noyes exhibits her work both nationally and internationally in such cities as Miami, San Francisco, London, and Paris. Her work is in numerous private and corporate collections, and was most recently commissioned for the Neiman Marcus Corporate Collection. 

 

Artist Statement

My work examines social constructions of idealized beauty by transforming inherited, found, forgotten, discarded, and unvalued materials. By creating multi-layered, sculptural paintings that both reveal and mask what is beneath the surface, I hope to provoke the question: what constitutes beauty?

 

I gather everyday objects, which I reconstitute into metamorphic, organic forms. The materials, manipulated, torn, burned, wrapped or crushed, are then embellished with chrome, steel, gold leaf, enamel paint and resin. The resin coating captures the energy and experimentation in a final layer of the production process, transforming what was once discarded and of no value into a valuable, seductively beautiful object alive and rich with texture.

 

Repetitive structures, such as the grid, provide a sense of order while amplifying the mis-perception of perfection through the imperfect repetition of pattern. The totality of the production process acts as both a metaphor and visual paradox for the nature of being human - we are all perfectly imperfect.

 

The physical and emotional process of making, speaks to a personal narrative hidden in the layers of embellished discards. The paintings exemplify the existential struggle for existence while questioning the over-determined role beauty plays. In life, as in art, true beauty is complicated.