Maureen Dougherty

BLUM is pleased to present New York-based artist Maureen Dougherty’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and in Los Angeles.

Dougherty plays with the push and pull between innocence and maturity—deliberately blurring the two in renderings that serve as commentary on the state of media and contemporary culture. The painter draws imagery from platforms like Instagram or OnlyFans—known for its proliferation of social media archetypes and amateur pornography—and reflects these commonplace representations back upon themselves with eloquent mimesis rendered with sensual brush strokes that selectively reveal the artist’s hand. Hyperbolizing the peculiarities of her chosen scenes, Dougherty isolates her figures in monochromatic backgrounds with compositions that reference the work of more recent artists such as Alex Katz or Pablo Picasso as well as classical artists of the High Renaissance such as Raphael. 

The artist's images deal with human intimacy and connection, though Dougherty intentionally omits a certain level of detail to encourage the viewer to become curious about or even impose themselves on the painting's subject. Women on the rocks (2024) sees three women sitting seaside, together atop an ornate tapestry—a painterly moment which allows Dougherty’s previous explorations of abstraction to peak through. The ocean behind the artist’s figures has been rendered as a simple rectangle of cobalt below a block of lapis sky. This hyper-simplified background allows the viewer to focus more intently on each otherworldly figure. With lanky, toothpick legs that dissipate toward the bottom of the canvas and pristine profiles atop proudly exposed breasts, Dougherty notes that these women are served up to onlookers “on the rocks”—a sly commentary on the pervasive objectification of the female body. 

Dougherty’s paintings emphasize the female gaze as well as the agency of those who are gazed upon. These figures are empowered to exploit their own assets for personal gain. Subjects such as those in Grey Wall (2024), Green Sucker (2023–2024), or Blonde (2022) stare directly at the viewer as if daring their perceivers to look away—the latter doing so with baby Yoda in hand, in a true nod to the online culture from which the image was culled. Dougherty’s bodies are perfectly imperfect. Inflating chests and lips while shrinking and elongating spindly legs, the artist exposes the impossibility of body ideals that circulate across the internet.

A technically skilled painter, having pursued colorist principles and narrative painting at the New York Studio School, Dougherty returned to figuration during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic after a decades-long fixation with decorative abstract motifs. It is perhaps this body of work’s origination in a moment of isolation for the artist that continues to imbue Dougherty’s paintings with such a unique and introspective humanity. Flattening her subjects to great effect, Dougherty critiques, examines, and thoughtfully reduces the pervasive post-internet imagery that binds us.

The first monograph published on the artist, Maureen Dougherty: Women, will be released in conjunction with this exhibition. Published by Blurring Books, with over forty artworks, a conversation between the artist and curator Alison M. Gingeras, contributions from Joe Fyfe, David Rimanelli, and John Cheim, this title will be available at BLUM Los Angeles or via blum-gallery.com. Dougherty will sign copies of the publication on opening night: Saturday, July 13, at 6pm.