Neverne Covington has drawn and painted since childhood. Having grown up in the American South, she found an endless source of inspiration in the resplendent light, verdant landscape, and botanical diversity of her surroundings. The imagery that comes to life in her work is inspired both by direct observation and memory. The forms in her work are combinations of abstraction and figuration, which address the flow of time and movement and the rhythm of nature.
Drawn to a variety of mediums, she produces oil paintings, monotypes, intaglios, drawings, sculpture and book art.
Neverne’s educational background includes coursework at the University of South Florida, Eckerd College. and City & Guilds, in London, England (during which time she was a young single mother).
Her work has been published in books and periodicals from a young age, and has been exhibited in The Brevard Museum of Art, Melbourne, Florida, the Tampa Museum, Tampa Florida, the Museum of the South, Birmingham Alabama, the Florida State Capital, Tallahassee Florida, the Lowe Gallery, Miami and in the Florida Museum for Women Artists, Deland Florida.
In addition, she has held residencies at VCCA in Auvilar, France, The Hambidge Center for the Arts in Rabun Gap Georgia and at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Sweet Briar, Virginia, and her work is currently in residence at John Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, the Southern Graphics Council Archives, the University of South Florida and the University of Akron, Ohio, Mease Hospital Foundation, and several private collections.
Artist’s Statement
As an artist and human being, I experience the natural world as brimming with mystery and intrique. Encounter and interaction with the richness of flora and fauna in my surroundings ignites my senses and intellect. I closely align with the luminous beauty of the water, sun, clouds, sand, trees, flowers, and sky around me, and with the exuberant colors reflected in the streams and swamps. Direct observation and immersion in the natural world informs my work and determines its themes: permanence, impermanence, and transfiguration. My paintings explore the tangible and intangible forces that shape matter, and from which we ourseves emerge.
Rhythm, pattern, and repetition shape my process and direction as an artist. I start with small studies often working on several paintings at the same time. A dialogue often emerges among my paintings, as they interact with one another in the language of color, texture, and form. The viscosity and consistency of the mediums I employ influence my creative process, which becomes more tangible in the smearing, dragging, and rubbing needed to create volume and form.
Painting and drawing make me pay attention. They draw me into the mystery of nature and the landscape of memory. Creating art is a way of bringing order to the world as I know it, to the world I am becoming conscious of. It also gives me privileged access to what I perceive as a preconscious world, of which I know little. In my work, I strive to uncover nature’s known and unknowable essence, because inherent in this intangible essence is a great mystery that feeds my heart and soul and nourishes my art.
To explore more of Neverne’s work visit her website at nevernecovington.com.