Morpeth Contemporary presents new work by Christine Lafuente, an artist inspired by the beauty of nature. Be it outdoors in Maine or in her Brooklyn studio, the same questions inform her paintings: How does fog reduce color? How does the sun at once create and break down forms? How does mist accentuate light? How do flowers offer such saturated color? 

Lafuente’s landscape paintings first evoke a sense of place, be it meadows, rocky beaches, or ocean horizon lines. She captures them, en plein air, with painterly intent and curiosity. Lafuente says: “I am drawn to subjects that I don’t fully visually understand, that are mysterious, elusive, and may only present themselves poetically. Often, I think: ‘I don’t understand what I’m seeing, but maybe I can understand what I’m seeing by painting it.’” This contemplative process is also what we see in her “still life landscapes” executed in the atmosphere of her studio, where peonies and buttercups meet peaches, cherries, and objects from the artist’s cabinet. Here, Lafuente’s brush continues to delight in the dissolving shadows and prismatic colors that captivate her outdoors.

Lafuente’s painterly works bridge the beauty of the natural world with an artist’s appetite to understand and translate it. In answer to her question, “What color is the air between me and what I see?,” she titles this body of work The Air Between.

A native of Poughkeepsie NY, Lafuente received an B.A. in English from Bryn Mawr College in 1991. She then moved to downtown Philadelphia to earn a Certificate in Painting and Printmaking from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. There she was awarded a Louis S. Ware Memorial Scholarship for European Travel. While Artist-in-Residence at the Fleisher Art Memorial from 1997 to 2002, she began teaching. In 2003 she moved to Brooklyn NY, where she earned a Masters in Fine Arts at Brooklyn College. In November 2023, Lafuente did an Artist Residency at Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy. Except for 2020 when she sheltered-in-place in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, she lives and works in Brooklyn throughout the year and spends summers painting in Maine.

Image: Seawall, Clearing After Rain, oil on linen, 30 x 30 inches