The eight paintings in this show by Canadian artist Jane Corrigan offer an enticing portal into a wholesome world of athletics, fresh air and carefree girls, exuding an uncynical joie de vivre with scenes such as those of a young lady un-self-consciously chugging down a bottle of milk, and two others cavorting on a playing field. Corrigan’s visions are so perfect as to be impossible, forcing the question of what sorts of freedoms today’s young women can actually expect.
Corrigan’s loose, brushy paint strokes set nature in motion, enlivening the subjects and their verdant surroundings while channeling a youthful energy that practically pulses off the canvas. The characters’ most notably shared feature—long untamed hair—flies upward even as the figures stand still, as in the case of one leggy female, wearing jogging shorts, whose wild blond mane rises like flames from the back of her head. You might think of her as a contemporary version of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, but her hand-on-hip pose is confident, not demure, and there’s nary a trace of alluring curves.
Indeed, Corrigan’s women seem asexual, even in such images as a smooching couple with their bodies held far apart, and a girl stretched out on the ground in a come-hither pose: Her midriff is exposed and her lips are puckered, but her body is as flat as a washboard.
Not all is idyllic: Two pieces feature injured players, each clutching a bloody leg that might be meant to foreshadow the onset of menstruation or an end to innocence. But for the most part, Corrigan’s girls inhabit a utopia where beauty is relative, bodies are strong and the future is full of promise.—Merrily Kerr