Carrie Moyer’s sumptuous paintings on canvas explore and extend the legacy of American Abstraction while paying homage to many of its seminal female figures among them Helen Frankenthaler, Elizabeth Murray, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Rife with visual precedents, Moyer’s compositions reference Color Field, Pop Art and 1970s Feminist art - while proposing a new approach to fusing history, research and experimentation in painting. In addition Moyer’s work, influenced by a background in design and queer activism, intricately weaves together concept, research, and lived experience with a range of stylistic and physical references. With their evocative, bodily forms, transparent veils of aqueous color and flat surfaces, Moyer’s paintings forge distinct traces of 20th century art — Surrealism, Color Field painting, Pop and 1970s Feminist art — into a contemporary vision uniquely her own. The subject of recent museum exhibitions, Moyer is recognized as one of the most distinctive, powerful, and thoughtful painters of her generation.
Moyer’s work has been exhibited widely in both the United States and Europe. Moyer was recently included in the exhibitions One Night Only in Dallas, TX (2019), Queer Abstraction at Des Moines Art Center, IA (2019), and Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Times at the Portland Museum of Art, ME (2020). Her paintings were recently featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial Exhibition. DC Moore Gallery has presented two solo exhibitions of Moyer’s work Pagan's Rapture (2018) and Sirens (2016). Previous museum shows including, Carrie Moyer: Pirate Jenny, that originated at the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY and traveled to SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA, and the Columbus College of Art and Design, OH (2013); and Interstellar, at the Worcester Art Museum, MA (2012). Group exhibitions include, Three Graces: Polly Apfelbaum, Tony Feher, and Carrie Moyer, at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler, at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; and Agitpop!, at the Brooklyn Museum, NY, all in 2015.
Moyer earned a BFA from Pratt Institute (1985), an MA in Computer Graphics from New York Institute of Technology (1990) and an MFA from Bard College (2000). She is a Professor in the Art and Art History Department and Director of the Graduate Program at Hunter College and Vice Chair of the Board of Governors at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.