Jacqueline Gourevitch began exhibiting in Chicago in the mid-50’s while still a student at both the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute, and after a summer session at Black Mountain College in 1950.
She has had grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Connecticut Commission for the Arts, the Florsheim Foundation, Tamarind, and a 1% for Art in Public Spaces commission. In 2004 The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her its Academy Award. Over the years she has taught at Wesleyan University in CT, at the University of California, Berkeley, and most recently at the Cooper Union, among others.
Having come “of age visually” at the height of abstract painting, her works have engaged and referenced a wide range of subjects and ways of painting. Yet, the issues central to her concerns as a visual artist have remained constant. This is perhaps best conveyed by various “statements'' she has made for exhibitions over the years: “My work is deeply grounded in close observation of the world around me, both natural and man-made, yet always as involved with the process of painting as with the act of seeing. Painting is deeply about seeing, contemplating appearances, about how to understand and represent what is out there visually. The appearances are not superficial. You never see more than the surface. Paintings that invite close scrutiny and reveal themselves gradually over time, like the world around us, have always had a special meaning to me. They allow for reflection and meditation. I aim for that.”
