Constance Kiermaier

Guild of Artists Award Recipient

Constance Kiermaier grew up on a farm in Virginia.  A graduate of the School of Fine Arts at Yale University, she worked as a freelance commercial artist, raised four children, and as soon as it became viable, devoted herself full-time to serious painting.  Ms. Kiermaier is a collagist, box maker, printmaker, painter and teacher. 
 
In New England, her work has been exhibited at the Mattatuck Museum; the Rhode Island School of Design, the Silvermine Arts Center, the Mills Gallery in Boston, and at Yale University.  In New York City, she has had four solo exhibits at SOHO20, and has been included in group exhibitions at G. W. Einstein, the Genesis Gallery, and the National Academy of Fine Arts.  In Maine, where she has spent her summers for many years, she has exhibited at the Maine Center for Contemporary Art, Rockport; Between the Muse, Rockland; the Drawing Room, St. George and at the Portland Museum Biennial.

Ms. Kiermaier is the recipient of many awards including the Faber Birren Award for Distinctive and Creative Expression with Color. In 1993, she received a fellowship grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts/National Endowment for the Arts and in 2003 she was awarded a grant from the Weir Farm Foundation. She is a lifetime member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists, and served on Silvermine’s gallery committee for many years. 
 
Kiermaier taught “Concepts in Painting” over the course of the past 25 years. She has been a mentor and a thoughtful guiding spirit for serious art students, helping them to break through to the professional level.  Her love of art, her vision and her commitment to the process of making art has honed the artistic careers of her students, many of whom went on to become members of the Silvermine Guild.
 
A resident of Westport for many years, she now lives and maintains a studio in Norwalk.
Her new solo exhibition, Evidence of Nature, can be seen at the H. Pelham Curtis Gallery at the New Canaan Library through May 8.

“l continue to think of art as magic, and myself as a kind of magician who through complex trickery can manipulate visual perceptions and create a dichotomy of the real and the unreal.  In my lifelong exploration of this magic, as a painter and maker of boxes, collages and constructions, I find that I delight and surprise myself in the process of seeking to delight and surprise.  This discovery is the ultimate enchantment.”