Main Gallery, Smithville, Texas
A selection of artworks available now at Main Gallery Smithville
Habitats, Earth Shifts and Offerings
From my artist talk, 3/23/24:
These paintings are selections from four separate bodies of work all completed within a four year time frame; 2020 - 2024.
While contemplating this show I remembered that a lot had happened in the world externally during this period of time. And while each of my paintings represents a personal story or theme, these paintings are also clearly reactions to events in the greater world.
There are two paintings from the group called Habitats and Pathways:
“Looking Glass at Lady Bird Lake” and
“Redbud and the Sycamore, Behind the Grapevine”
These, from 2020, just before the pandemic, are scenes sourced on my bike rides and hikes in and around Austin. The skies are blue. I was recording what I saw, my impressions, my memories, what I wanted to honor in the natural world all around me.
By March of 2020, as the covid pandemic became our new reality, I was reacting to the sense of impending doom I felt. My skies became yellow and I began using a lot more red throughout. The “Earth Shift” paintings became alarming and dramatic. I was concerned with the fate of humankind and also the tipping point of the earth itself, climate catastrophe, and a point of no return.
Two paintings from the Earth Shift group are:
“She Will Have Her Way with You” and
“All the Pain and Love in This World Flows Through Our Earth”
Then, in February of 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. The painting titled “Who Do You Love?” (from the “Sum of the Parts” grouping) is a response. It features a woman holding an infant in a forest scene. I was thinking about the most vulnerable and powerless victims of war.
And, in June of 2022, Roe v Wade was overturned. The paintings from “Offerings” are concerned with nature as a whole - as all my work is - but these paintings became more specifically about female humans within nature; females as essential parts of nature and my concern about their exploitation and vulnerability.
Two paintings from Offerings:
"Angeline, Forever in Between" and
"Dear Henrietta Lacks"
The show at Main Gallery Smithville has over 20 pieces completed during this 4 year period and is up until April 20.
