17 North Beach Street
Nantucket, MA 02554
(508) 228-1515
GOOD STOCK
The works of island-inspired artist Courtney Stock.
story by Jonathan Soroff
Although she was born and raised in the Boston area, rising star Courtney Stock, thirty-five, began her career as an artist on Nantucket. “I developed my first black and white photo at NISDA,” she says, referring to Nantucket Island School of Design and the Arts, which was founded in the 1970s as a collaboration between Rhode Island School of Design and Mass College of Art, and offers interdisciplinary programs linking art to science, culture and the environment. “It was a fundamental experience for me,” Stock says. “I wrote my college essays about it. It was so formative.”
Her introduction to the island may sound familiar, but it’s enduringly and undeniably romantic: Her parents—Ann, a therapist, and Bob, a financial advisor—first set foot on Nantucket for their honeymoon and were instantly smitten. They summered on the island for a few weeks a year, realized they wanted to own a piece of paradise, and then bought the land on which they finally built the home where they retired. “The love of nature, growing up there, was a site of exploration and play and improvisation that very much informs my process as an artist,” Stock says.
After studying analog photography at Bowdoin College and graduating with a bachelor of visual arts in 2009, she transitioned to painting, earning a Master of Fine Arts from Mass College of Art. Today, she lives with her husband, Tim Callanan, in Brookline, Massachusetts, while her studio is in the Hyde Park section of Boston, but her heart remains thirty miles out to sea. “I feel my practice is very much connected to Nantucket, because it’s where I feel the most connected to nature,” she explains. “Being close to elemental forces like the ocean and the wind, and interacting with them, fills me with a sense of awe that I try to channel into my work.”
Her mixed-media pieces—which lately combine painting, textiles and found objects—aren’t palpably representative of sailboats bobbing in the harbor or a cranberry bog in autumn, but the Grey Lady enters her art in subtler ways. For instance, she incorporates found objects, like lobster buoys and mooring lines, into abstract pieces that conjure up storm clouds or bodies in motion.
“My mother gives me things she finds,” Stock says, “and I love stumbling upon objects on the beach. Nothing compares to the patina of the ocean.” And because she draws on every aspect of nature, she’s one of those rare birds who enjoys the island just as much in foul weather as fair. “I’d rather be on Nantucket on a rainy, thirty-degree day, than anywhere else.”
She and Callanan had their first child last month, and they plan to spend as much time as possible on the island with family during the baby’s first few months of life. “I can’t wait to show my child Nantucket, and to see it again through a child’s eyes.”
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