Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon Portland Community College

Kyle Staver

Kyle Staver received her MFA in Painting from Yale University (where she was a student of Lennart Anderson) and her BFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design.  She is represented by Züricher Gallery (New York).  She has had solo shows at Rx Gallery (Paris), National Arts Club (NY), Ohio State University (Lima), Steven Harvey Fine Art (NY), Tibor de Nagy (New York), Pennsylvania College of Art and Design (Lancaster), Lohin-Geduld Gallery (NY). She is the recipient of a 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize, and she was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in 2013. Although her works are in public collections in New York, PCC Rock Creek is currently the only institution on the west coast to have her work in its collection.

Roberta Smith in the New York Times wrote that Kyle Staver’s paintings “unfold with a combination of visual humor, fast, toothy brushwork and a complex allure that is new and entices you to look and look again, thinking through what’s happening, in paint, compositions and story… In this century’s resurgence of figurative painting, Ms. Staver is a significant precedent.”

Eric Sutphin in Art In America: “One difficulty with narrative painting is that the story at hand can subsume the work’s formal properties. Too much bravura will obscure the story, while too great an emphasis on narrative details can turn the image into an illustration. After decades in the studio, Staver has achieved this elusive but intensely rewarding equilibrium. She is able to make even the most familiar tale seem fresh, instilling her work with a genuine sense of joy and discovery.”