The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center and the Elaine de Kooning House have teamed up for an artist-in-residence program that began in July to bring Marie-Claire Chabauty from Montreal to East Hampton to create a portfolio of architectural portraits of each property.
"We are incredibly excited to partner with the Elaine de Kooning House," Matthew K. Ward, the director of the Pollock-Krasner House, said. "Marie-Claire is the perfect artist to sensitively capture the character of our sister studios."
"We're honored to collaborate with the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center," said Chris Byrne, the founder of the Elaine de Kooning House. "I've been a fan of the historic studio and accompanying programming since first visiting in 1998."
The idea for the residency was Mr. Ward's. During a conversation at the de Kooning House, Ms. Chabauty explained that Mr. Ward discovered her on Instagram. "He said he found me at the beginning of the pandemic, but then he lost track of me because he didn't remember my name." He rediscovered her on Instagram in December because he is interested in wrestling and she had created a series of paintings of wrestlers.
She moved into the de Kooning house for two weeks in July. At the time of the interview she was still making new paintings, most of them on small wood panels. Those of the Pollock-Krasner House focused on its exterior, including several that framed only shingles.
She also had access to Krasner's bedroom studio and showed a visitor a painting in progress of some of Krasner's "knickknacks."
The idea for how to represent the houses came to her in April, when she was babysitting for her parents' cats at their suburban Montreal home. "I started painting the houses there. It had been my childhood house and neighborhood, so when I walked through it I was looking at it in a different way. I always have my artist's switch on, so I see shade, light, and I took the idea of isolating details, that's what I like to do."
Before being tapped for the residency, she knew about the Pollock-Krasner House but not de Kooning's. "In Montreal I work in a tiny room, the light has nothing to do with it." Because of the enormous skylight/window in the de Kooning studio, "Here I can't always see the photos on my phone because the light is too bright."
But she manages. She has made two paintings of that window. One is relatively abstract, suggesting the window's hexagonal shape, but more glow than architecture. The second captures realistically the architecture and the light and shadows of a small portion of the window.
Ms. Chabauty likes the texture of wood as a surface to paint. "I like that it's flat, and I also like that each wood panel has some grain or texture to work with." It is perhaps why a painting of a detail of a corner of the Pollock-Krasner House looks as if it's actually wood shingles.
"I'm not stuck on one style," she said. "It seems like the surface really dictates how I paint, and the subject, too. It changes from series to series and from painting to painting. I like to work directly, too, so there are no sketches, it just happens."
She comes from a family of artists. Her great-grandfather was a fresco painter who left France at the beginning of the 20th century to paint churches in Brazil. On his stopover in Quebec he missed the boat, so he stayed and painted churches there.
His son, her grandfather, specialized in trompe l'oeil and faux finish, so her great-grandfather would paint the big religious scenes and the ceilings, while her grandfather was doing faux marble and faux wood. Her grandmother still has the specialized tools they fashioned to do their work.
Ms. Chabauty earned her B.F.A. from Concordia University in Montreal. Several years later she was a board member of Articule, an artist-run center in that city. "It's a great place, but it's not my kind of art. I learned a lot from them about the art world and how it works, but I also knew that I had to follow my own path and language."
She said she is not part of the art world. "There's a lot of art in Montreal, but not a big art market. So we don't sell a lot. But we have Instagram, it's wonderful, it's kind of my gallery now, and hopefully more people can see my work."
The residency will culminate next year with an exhibition at the Pollock-Krasner House and a publication produced by both venues.
