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Connie M. Borup

Connie McCormick Borup was born in Kaysville, Utah May 1, 1945. She is a landscapist whose work is characterized by a tonalist style combined with a unique sense of color. She lives in Kaysville, Utah. 

Borup earned a BA in German in 1967, and a BFA in painting and drawing in 1975 from the University of Utah. Robert Olpin introduced her to the Hudson River School and the American luminists. Paul Davis and Sam Wilson helped her develop as a painter. She taught art and German in local area schools for thirteen years. In 1992, she earned an MFA from the University of Utah.  

Borup's work has been honored with numerous awards and grants such as the juror's award in 1991 and 1993 at the spring salon, Springville Museum of Arts. For Utah '92, she was given the juror's and purchase award, and in 1995 she received a fellowship from the Utah Arts Council.  

The Gail Severn Gallery in Ketchum, Idaho and Phillips Gallery in Salt Lake represent her work.  A Compromise of Freedom and Control: Self-Portrait (1986) is part of the Springville Museum of Art.  Silver Border (1996) and Looking Through are examples of her work. 

Biographical information on this page was adapted from the Springville Museum of Art.

Connie M. Borup was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on May 1, 1945. As a young girl, she lived with her family in Kaysville, Utah. Living in a rural area instilled a strong appreciation for the land in Connie.

She comments, “some of my first memories have to do with fields, gullies, ponds, and the flat stretch of earth leading to the Great Salt Lake.“ This imagery can be seen in her landscape work today. As a young woman, she often saw LaConte Stewart, a prominent local landscape artist. She once took an art class from Stewart and was greatly influenced by his work.

As a teenager, Connie was more interested in the violin and in German than she was in art. She spent a year in Koln, Germany, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in German from the University of Utah in 1967. During her college years, she married and took time out for her family. Borup has one daughter.

In 1973, Connie Borup returned to the University of Utah and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and drawing. She began teaching German and art at Layton High School and remained there four years. The following nine years, she taught art and German at Brighton High School in Salt Lake City.

A pivotal point in Borup's art career came when she went to Vermont for a month to study under Wolf Kahn. This experience helped her push her work in the direction of a “... more personal interpretation of the landscape.“

Later, while teaching part time at Rowland Hall in Salt Lake City, Borup entered a Master's Degree program at the University of Utah. While at the university, she studied under Utah artists Paul Davis and Sam Wilson. She completed her Master of Fine Arts in painting and drawing in 1992.

Connie M. Borup's awards include the following: 1987 Utah High School Art Teacher of the Year; 2nd Place for the oil Desert Storm, at the 1990 Springville Annual Salon; Purchase Award from “Utah 92,“ painting and sculpture at the University of Utah; Finalist for the 1994 Utah Visual Arts Fellowship Award.

Connie Borup's work is represented by Phillips Gallery in Salt Lake City; Gail Severn Gallery in Sun Valley, Idaho; and Coda Gallery in Palm Desert, California. She currently lives in Salt Lake City and spends most of her time painting and teaching drawing at the University of Utah.

About her own work, Borup comments,

At the center of my creative drive there has always been a connection with nature as a pure force. I am interested in the austere, lonely qualities of country not touched by the human desire to control. This lack of reference to civilization presents us with a slightly portentous, yet peaceful, landscape. It is frail, yet ordered: severe, yet inviting: linked to both place and memory. Land forms which hold potential for describing the mysterious aspects of our existence have become my visual vocabulary. Painting allows me to reconstruct reality in ways that reveal my emotional and psychological make-up. The images that I select reflect this inner world and my sense of life.

About her piece A Compromise Of Freedom And Control, Connie Borup comments,

I am interested in a person's appearance based on his/her outside image. There is a conflict between what people choose to see from the outside and the collection of complicated emotions and thoughts that really exist inside a person.

Biography courtesy Springville Museum of Art.

Newspaper Articles

"1994 Utah Arts Festival Real Art Makes Stop up at Depot." The Salt Lake Tribune, June 19, 1994.

"Borup Adds Governor's Award to her Life's Impressive Canvas" The Salt Lake Tribune, September 21, 2003.

"Connie Borup and the Interior Landscape" The Salt Lake Tribune, January 10, 1999.

"Connie Borup: The Sublime in the Solitary Capturing the Hush of Nature." The Santa Fe New Mexican, November 8, 1996.

"School Party was 'Gym'-Dandy." The Salt Lake Tribune, November 8, 1990.

"Utah Marquee:Visual Arts." The Salt Lake Tribune, April 29, 1994.

"Utah Marquee:Visual Arts." The Salt Lake Tribune, April 22, 1994.

"Utah Marquee:Visual Arts." The Salt Lake Tribune, April 15, 1994.

"Utah Marquee:Visual Arts." The Salt Lake Tribune, April 1, 1994.

"Utah Marquee:Visual Arts." The Salt Lake Tribune, March 25, 1994.

"Utah Marquee:Visual Arts." The Salt Lake Tribune, March 18, 1994.

"Utah Marquee:Visual Arts." The Salt Lake Tribune, March 11, 1994.

"Utah Marquee:Visual Arts." The Salt Lake Tribune, March 4, 1994.

"Winners of High-School Art Exhibit Listed." The Salt Lake Tribune, February 19, 1995.

Books

Borup, Connie. "Personal Sense of Place". M.F.A. thesis, University of Utah, 1992.

Dunbier, Lonnie, ed. The Artists Bluebook. Scottsdale, AZ: Ask Art.com, 2003.

Swanson, Vern G., Robert S. Olpin, Donna Poulton and Janie L. Rogers. 150 Year Survey Utah Art & Artists. Salt Lake City, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2002.

Swanson, Vern G., Robert S. Olpin, and William C. Seifrit. Utah Painting and Sculpture. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1997.

Periodicals

Brown, Margaret. "Best of the West." Southwest Art, November 1997.

McGarry, Susan H. "Luminescent Landscapes." Southwest Art, April 1997.

Southwest Art. "Coast to Coast: Best of the West." Southwest Art, December 2002.

Southwest Art. "Palm Springs/Palm Desert." Southwest Art, March 1998.

Willard, Christopher. "Titling and Copyrighting Art." American Artist, January 2002.

 

 

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