PETRA CORTRIGHT

quicksilver sea bubble dramamine dream grapples with grief, loss, change, comfort, health, childhood, poison, toxins, nostalgia... anxiety. These deeply personal paintings continue a shift in Cortright’s practice where she is actively photographing subject matter around where she is living, as opposed to her earlier process of mining the internet for images. The distance from the natural world in Cortright’s recent body of work is magnified by the fact that the flora, fauna, and landscapes captured in her disjunctured paintings are sourced from photographs she has taken of the dioramas and exhibits of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. In these paintings, Cortright transports and amalgamates the early 20th century traditions of plein-air painting and Californian Impressionism to the post-digital age while engaging with her own relationship to Santa Barbara’s locale.

Petra Cortright (Santa Barbara, CA, 1986) studied Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York and the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include Paper-Thin Wood Veil Wide Range Hop Suisse! at Zeughaus Teufen, Switzerland (2025) and sapphire cinnamon viper fairy at the Palm Springs Art Museum (2022). Her work has also been included in exhibitions at Knoxville Museum of Art (2025); LACMA (2024); MCA Chicago (2024); MoCA, Los Angeles (2023); Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara (2021); Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest (2021); MoMA, New York (2021); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019); 12th Bienniale de Lyon, France (2013); 53rd Venice Biennale (2009); amongst others. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of The Bass Museum, Miami; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Palm Springs Art Museum; Péréz Art Museum, Miami; San Jose Museum of Art; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; and The Stedelijk Museum, Breda/Amsterdam.