statement

I am exploring direct experience, contemplation, cultural picturing, and the pursuit of an alchemy of image and paint as a volatile witness to life and memory.

I start with direct experience, as participant of an event. I am drawn to what can be named as rituals along side the unforeseen dynamics of relationships. I use photography to record a type of stop-motion sequence, to capture a fraction of the minute instances that make up an event.  The cultural practice of photographing ourselves, recording our family rituals, delivers an instant recognition of the event. Contemplating the imagined significance of nuances and periphery details fills the psychological arena with potentially expandable narrative. The format of a storyboard refers to a dichotomy of experience, a duality of holistic and incremental memory, while also triggering cultural familiarity through allusions to cinematography and graphic novels.

Through painting, I shift to a slow looking‚ at these stilled moments. Yielding more than what was initially observable in the snapshots, the painting process reveals the dynamics between the main and the periphery details. I use painting to regain some of those omissions of memory, those less foregrounded parts. I keep painting until the physical concreteness and lushness of the paint is greater than that of the illusion of depth, and threatens to dissolve the particulars. I want these paintings to provide an extended and intimate immersion into a sense of the whole and the particulars of the moment.

bio

born: 1958, Dublin, Ireland

education:

Georgia State University, MFA, 2000
National College of Art & Design, Dublin, Ireland, Certificate in Teaching, 1981
National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland Diploma in Fine Art, 1980

selected awards/honors

Purchase Award, LaGrange National Biennial, GA, 2008
Merit Award, Valdosta National , Valdosta State University, GA, 2008
Honorable Mention–Juried Art Exhibit, Bascom-Louise Gallery, Highlands, NC, 2007
Merit Award–PAINT South Shore Art Center,  Cohasset, MA, 2007

selected publications

Zocalo Tucson Magazine, Article-148-conrade-wilde-gallery, by Dolly Spalding, November 15, 2009
Catalogue and essay:  Domestic Tensions-Axis of Longing, Gay Center for the Arts, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Curator: Carrie Hoelzer;  Catalogue essay: Jeanne Nemeth, 2008
On the Edge, Jerry Cullum, Atlanta Journal Constitution, 2007
"Altar candles inspire illuminating images,"  Catherine Fox,  Atlanta Journal Constitution, 2004

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Presence: Votives and Portraits, Arnold Gallery, Shorter College, Rome, GA, 2009
Ashes to Ashes: Demise and Transformation, Conrad Wilde Gallery, Tucson, AZ, 2009
Absence, Association of Visual Artists, AVA, Chattanooga
Votives, Moving Spirits Gallery, Atlanta, GA, 2004

selected group shows

All Small Redux, Dalton Gallery, Agnes Scott College, Atlanta, GA, 2009
LaGrange National Biennial, LaGrange Museum, LaGrange, GA, 2008
23rd Annual International Exhibition, The University of Texas at Tyler, TX, 2008
QX.net Nude International 2008, Lexington Art League, Lexington, KY, 2007