Runaway Brides
Delphine Hennelly
June 1 - 15, 2023
Of Loves Court, 2023
Oil on Linen
60 x 84 x 2 in (152.4 x 213.4 x 5.1 cm)
COUNTY is pleased to present Runaway Brides, a solo exhibition by Delphine Hennelly. This is her first solo exhibition at the gallery.
Runaway Brides explores the overlapping social and cultural meanings of marriage from the perspective of women searching for freedom. Although the paintings appear to be portraits of distinct individuals whose fashions span the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, Hennelly views them all as manifestations of a single archetype—a sympathetic anti-hero who reappears throughout time, bucking social conventions and risking personal security for the sake of autonomy. Each time we encounter one of Hennelly’s brides, she is poised on the brink of a new uncertain future.
“I have long been interested in a figure in flight mode, in the act of running away or toward something,” Hennelly says. “Playing upon the liminality of a still image, the figure in motion, caught mid-flight, fascinates me, as one will never know if the flight of the figure is a movement towards or away from resolution.”
Unconventional though they are, Hennelly’s brides embrace feminine ideals of sensuality and softness. Some are modelled after figures in popular eighteenth-century “boudoir paintings,” whose sensual qualities Hennelly amplifies. They sink into luxurious piles of bedding or into the folds of rich, satiny garments.
The artist explores these soft, sensual textures somewhat more abstractly in her series of all-over floral compositions, which she paints concurrently with the bride paintings and presents alongside them in this exhibition. Reminiscent of silk ribbons or powdery tufted upholstery, the floral paintings extend Hennelly’s longstanding interest in color as a way to create atmosphere and mood. Whether suggestive of foggy full-moon nights or drizzly afternoons with storm clouds on the horizon, the cool color palettes of the works in Runaway Brides reflect moments in time that are neither turbulent nor fully calm. They embody the uncertainty of the brides’ own futures, as well as the coolness of their inner resolve.
Delphine Hennelly (b. 1979) received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2002 and her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Visual Arts at Rutgers University in 2017. Her work has been exhibited in the United States, Europe, and Canada, most recently in a solo exhibition, Possible Worlds, Counterfactuals, And the Dark of the Night Sky, at Carvalho Park, New York, and a solo exhibition at Huxley Parlour in London, UK, Through Perseus’ Shield. She is the recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award and her work has appeared in numerous publications including ArtMaze Magazine, Nut Publication, and New American Paintings. In 2022, Hennelly was a resident artist of Palazzo Monti (Brescia, Italy). She lives and works in Montréal.
Logan R. Beitmen