Exhibit on Isolation Opens at
Christopher Newport University's Falk Gallery
News Release - April 8, 2005
contact:
Denise Waters
dwaters@cnu.edu
(757) 594-7331
(NEWPORT NEWS, VA) – Christopher Newport University is proud to announce the MFA thesis exhibition of M. Maurer in the Falk Gallery at the Ferguson Center for the Arts beginning April 25, 2005. With this body of work, Maurer completes her terminal degree from the joint ODU/NSU visual studies program. The exhibition, titled “Ten Prinzhorn Patients: a Study in Isolation,” consists of 10 oil portrait paintings, an animated video and display of drawings.
Maurer’s oil paintings represent the psychological portraits of 10 patients who were treated by Dr. Prinzhorn, a German psychiatrist, art historian and vocalist. The patients had no artistic training but created pieces which were “of strange beauty, imagination, complexity and power.” Maurer created these portraits to symbolically represent the psychological being of those patients, not their actual appearance. Maurer says that “as a figurative artist, my themes concern the interplay of time, isolation and human experience.” Having never seen pictures of the patients, she contrived their images based on their experiences of isolation, using Dr Prinzhorn’s notes, her medical experiences as a registered nurse and feelings as an artist.
The Falk Gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays and is located in the Ferguson Center for the Arts. For more information, contact the Ferguson Center for the Arts at 594-7448.
Christopher Newport University is a four-year public university in Newport News, Virginia. CNU enrolls nearly 5,000 students through its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the School of Business. CNU's faculty and staff of nearly 1,000 focus on "students first," outstanding teaching, access and opportunity, and liberal learning. CNU is committed to leadership in the community and the Commonwealth. Visit us at www.cnu.edu .