Gallery Beat

Rosemary Feit Covey, Black Umbrella, 2021, 36”x36”, mixed media, printmaking, painting & magnets on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art.

The owner and director of one of the hardest working visual fine arts galleries in the DMV, as well as a one of the planet’s happiest smiles is Amy Morton, who cut her teeth in the gallery business many years ago in Alexandria, and for the past decade plus or so has been running Morton Fine Art at 52 O Street NW #302 in the District.

And MFA, as the gallery is known, will be presenting “Descartes Died in the Snow”, a solo exhibition showcasing work by DMV artist Rosemary Feit Covey (and long-time Torpedo Factory presence in Studio 224), on view from March 3–March 31, 2022.

MFA notes that this exhibition will be “marking both the debut of new work and the reactivation of older works”, and that the exhibition “uncovers new dimensions within the artist’s vast oeuvre. Taken as a whole, this collection of work illuminates the fragility of life on our embattled planet, recognizing the catastrophic ecological losses that mark our current era while turning a hopeful eye towards altogether new horizons.”

Covey is not only a master printmaker, but I have never come across anyone who has married the technical challenges of printmaking with more sophisticated approaches and ideas than this South African ex-pat!

In fact, I think that she may just be the best printmaker on the planet! I’ve been following the career of this master printmaker for years now… and for years I have been mesmerized by not only her technical skill, but also by her powerful and often breathtaking imagery.

Over the years I’ve also seen Covey do something that few artists do well: she keeps pushing and redefining the genre of printmaking to the point that she can no longer be categorized and labeled simply as a printmaker.

And thus I’ve managed to label her both as the best printmaker on the planet, and also not just a printmaker… see where I’m heading?

Covey’s current focus is on “environmental concerns is informed by 20 years of collaborations with scientists, during which biology, ecology, and mortality have remained steady themes of the artist’s practice. The past three decades have seen the artist rise as an established wood engraver, followed in recent years by an expansion towards mediums including experimental printmaking and mixed media. From the replication of the printmaking process to the carving of the printing block, Covey’s works attend to personal analogies of physical and emotional fortitude; through the manipulation of absence and presence, lightness and darkness, the artist evokes a darker psychological sensibility within complex figural representations.”

In the monumental piece “Black Ice”, circa 2017, and a spectacular 72x240