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Story and Photos by Mary Katherine Stump

Courtney Garrett lives and paints in a converted high school basketball gym in Cabbagetown, a neighborhood in North Atlanta. I was invited to her home this past fall for a sneak peak of her new work, “Monuments and Movements.”

I had been on a few studio visits before, but the promise of an abandoned school on the  outskirts of town made cozy by an up-and-coming Alabama artist peaked my interest.

The surprise was not in the structure. The abandoned school I had hoped for—decrepit, weed-stricken, old arithmetic assignments blowing down the halls like tumbleweeds— had undergone a full renovation and was now being domesticated by a handful of Atlanta’s young creative set. Courtney’s unit, which she shares with her husband Beau, had a numbered plaque outside their door like all the others.

Courtney, a native of Clay County, Alabama, was not the small-town-girl-turned-artist that I’d expected either.  That’s not to say she didn’t look the part. Clad in ripped-up skinny jeans and suede ankle boots with a bottled water in hand, she certainly looked like a country girl who now embodied a more metropolitan lifestyle. But beneath that exterior, I found a girl who has maintained a certain small-town charm that made me feel at home as she shared with me the deeply personal stories that have shaped her work.

“Monuments and Movements” is a series of photographs that Courtney shot out of her car window while driving around Clay County—you could call them “rural” in subject matter—covered in paint and lacquer that she uses to highlight or disguise certain parts of those images. As I sat down in Courtney’s studio, she began by explaining her inspiration for the series.

“I remember as a little girl, the way the seat felt on my skin in my dad’s truck on the way to the car lot. This memory doesn’t make me who I am, but it is a part of where I am going. It doesn’t seem like a pivotal experience, but it is a monument that is part of my movement over time,” she says.

Courtney’s images highlight these seemingly insignificant experiences. Whether it is a white farm house that reminds you of a roadside landmark from childhood or a one-room church that conjures up the sound of your mother’s singing voice—Courtney’s images are haunting in their ability to remind you, and in some ways glorify, buried images from your past.

“Some people don’t like these pictures,” she says. “Maybe it reminds them of when they were poor or living a jacked-up life. But these things, even if they’re painful, are so important to where we’ve been and where we’re going.”

Courtney’s breakthrough as an artist came when she was commissioned last year by Birmingham-based law firm Balch & Bingham to do a series for their newly renovated offices.

“There were so many paintings,” she says. “It was when I knew I had to quit my day job.” She was asked for something “intelligent, minimalistic, sophisticated” and within the constraints of a certain color palette. What she managed to do within those constraints was above and beyond what Balch & Bingham had expected.

“When she unveiled the pieces and proceeded to describe them, we were speechless,” said Debra Lewis, a partner at the firm and the head of their art selection committee.
“What she did was take something as simple and everyday as the horizon and turn it into a powerful, emotive image. I’m telling you, even the men in the room got weepy.”

No doubt about it, Courtney’s gift is in her ability to make you feel deeply in response to her work.

Though she’s confident in her work now and has many collectors and professionals in the art world watching her career closely, Courtney hasn’t always been so sure of her future as an artist.  Last year, when she was in one of her more insecure states-of-mind, she applied for an assistant’s job at Bennett Street Gallery, the gallery that now represents her.

“We had an opening at the gallery for part-time help, and Courtney applied,” says Christina Keeney, managing director at Bennett Street. “When I met with her in person, I learned that she was in fact a very talented artist who was selling her work to clients in
New York and Palm Beach.”

“Both Susie Pryor, the gallery owner and I grew up in fairly rural settings. Seeing the barns and houses in Courtney’s work reminded both of us of images from our past, and in some ways of a simpler time. When we learned that she wasn’t being represented by a gallery, we jumped at the chance to get her on board with Bennett Street.”

As Courtney and I were finishing our visit, she said to me, “Shouldn’t your monuments be so grand that people seek you out to learn more about them, versus you having to go out and find an audience?”

With this new work, it’s unlikely that she’ll have to search too hard for recognition.

For more information about Courtney, visit www.courtneyjgarrett.com.

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