Untitled Law of Chance IV, 2026
By needling felt wool on canvas, I create abstract ‘paintings’ that are steeped in art historical reference and personal experience. The pieces are ambivalent - a fuzzy space where colorful, vaguely recognizable woolen forms and objects float. The works include leftover yarn from the sweaters I knitted, likenesses of characters from my son’s cartoons and allude to anatomy textbook illustrations.
Through her reimagining of familiar materials, Courtney Childress creates situations and objects that evoke the sensory experiences of childhood while highlighting the physical constraints and conditions of the present. Her work with felted wool on canvas carries on that playful abstraction and tactile connection.
Childress had a solo exhibition at Deanna Evans, New York, NY in 2023 and solo exhibition at Massey Klein Gallery, New York, NY in 2021. Her work was included in group exhibitions at DIMIN NYC, New York, NY (2023); VSOP Projects, Long Island, NY (2023); PLAY at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany (2020 - 2021); SPRING/BREAK Big Bang with Eliot Greenwald, New York, NY (2020); Dutch Masters, Mrs Gallery, Maspeth, NY (2018); SPRING/BREAK Black Mirror, curated by Kristen Racaniello, New York, NY (2017); Summer Anagram at Nurture Art, Brooklyn, NY (2016); Colors, at Louis B. James Gallery, New York, NY (2015); Mingled Bodies, curated by Jovana Stokic at Vanity Projects, Miami, FL and New York, NY (2015); Four Lives at Field Projects, NY (2013).
Childress received a City Artist Corps Grant from New York Foundation for the Arts in 2021 and the ACE Grant NYC from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation in 2018.
Her solo show Fuzzy Logic was reviewed in the Brooklyn Rail (June 2023) and she was interviewed for Bomb Magazine (June 2023.) Her work was featured in MAAKE Magazine in 2022, curated by Tyler LaFreniere; ART MAZE Magazine in 2021, curated by Julie Curtiss and mentioned in The New York Times in 2018.
She received her MFA from S.U.N.Y. at Purchase College, Purchase, NY (2012) and her BFA from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL (2008). She lives and works in New York, NY.