Aspen Art Museum

Pearling path

2024

Oil and oil pastel on linen

67 × 87 in   |   170.2 × 221 cm

Courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner and Château Shatto

Estimate: $50,000–$70,000

The following text appears in the Aspen Art Museum Summer Magazine 2024

There is a dynamism to Emma McIntyre’s paintings. It is as if the process of becoming is not yet resolved—their energy has been captured, their organic forms arrested in flight. Either large or small—nothing in between—McIntyre favors a strong palette, often using a restricted selection of colors within each work, with one tone in particular dominating the whole. She combines oil, acrylic, oil stick and other materials, adding in a chemical solution which reacts with iron-based pigment; its rusting effect is almost instantaneous, but the colors mutate further over time.

McIntyre begins by pouring her paint onto a flat support, allowing chance to play a protagonist’s role. Once she has reoriented the work, she adds further marks, using brushes, rags and her fingers. In recent paintings, recognizable details have emerged amid the abstractions—plants and signs of animal life. In an article from 2022 for Cultured, Dean Kissick quotes McIntyre as explaining, “Sometimes it feels like I can almost see the finished work, and the painting process is about finding it.”

McIntyre acknowledges the influence of a number of greats, including Sigmar Polke, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and Cy Twombly. Her enigmatic titles, such as Laws of night and honey, The gospel of translucence, Queen of the air, Doth mutation love (all 2023), add an extra layer of poetry to these beautiful and intriguing works.

Born in Auckland, New Zealand, McIntyre completed her undergraduate studies and first Master’s degree there and, in 2021, she completed a second MFA at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. She continues to live and work in Los Angeles.

About the Artist

Emma McIntyre creates vivid abstractions imbued with chromatic and gestural energy. Instinctual yet deeply considered, her canvases explore painting’s material and alchemical possibilities. Employing oils and unconventional substances, she pairs chance-based, intuitive processes with a repertoire of motifs and compositional strategies gleaned from a close study of art history—reformulating these divergent threads into a fresh and unbridled mode of painting that is uniquely her own.

McIntyre was born in Auckland, New Zealand. After graduating from Auckland University of Technology in 2011, she received an MFA from the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, in 2016 and a second MFA from the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, in 2021. In 2019 she received a Fulbright Graduate Award. McIntyre is a founding board member of the co-operative gallery Coastal Signs, Auckland.

Recent solo exhibitions of McIntyre’s work include Pearl Diver, Château Shatto, Los Angeles (2023); Madonna of the Pomegranate, Coastal Signs, Auckland (2022); Up bubbles her amorous breath, Air de Paris, Romainville, France (2022); and Heat, Mossman Gallery, Wellington (2020).

In 2023, work by the artist was included in L’Almanach 23, the fourth edition of the biennial held at Le Consortium, Dijon, France.

An echo, a stain, a solo exhibition of McIntyre’s work, was held at David Zwirner, New York, in 2023. In 2024, David Zwirner announced the representation of the artist in collaboration with Château Shatto, Los Angeles.

McIntyre lives and works in Los Angeles.

How to Bid

All lots will be on view at the Aspen Art Museum from July 17 through August 1.

Bidding on this work takes place at the ArtCrush gala on Friday, August 2nd, at 8pm MT. Absentee and telephone bidding available.

Please contact bid@aspenartmuseum.org for more information, including a condition report.

In the Live Auction, there is no Buyer’s Premium and the difference between the mid-estimate and the winning bid is a tax deductible donation to the museum.

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