Beverly McIver is showing her penetrating self-portraits and poignant family narratives at Betty Cuningham Gallery, her first show with the gallery. Renee Drinking Starbucks (Triptych), 2011, is one of a number of images exploring her relationship with her mentally disabled sister. Other themes tackled by the North Carolina-born and based painter, include depression and white perceptions of black women: powerful assertions of the personal as the political. In the catalog essay of her last New York exhibition (Kent Gallery, 2006), Irving Sandler wrote that “McIver has made the expressionist tradition her own by funneling it through her life with urgency, painting autobiographical images in an authentic and distinctive style that are at once psychological and social.” McIver will be the subject of an HBO documentary to be broadcast in December.
Until July 1. 541 West 25th Street, New York City, (212)-242 2772
Beverly McIver, Renee Drinking Starbucks (Triptych), 2011. Oil on canvas, 36 x 108 inches. Courtesy of Betty Cuningham Gallery
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