Contemporary Fine Art of Santa Barbara
Corridan Gallery Exhibit March 29 through May 12, 2012
New Growth
Two-person exhibit featuring series of contemporary Oil Paintings and Limited Edition Pigment Prints on Canvas
Dorothy Churchill-Johnson and Masha Keating.
Dorothy Churchill-Johnson - Giant Botanicals
In this series Dorothy Churchill-Johnson has taken common, often overlooked plants, exaggerated them and isolated them in compelling compositions. Sometimes referred to as super-realism, the paintings are notable for their large scale as well as their attention to detail. In fact, size is a component of the message. By painting a small subject on a grand scale, she is asking the viewer to see the everyday world in a new way.
Surface, pattern and design are primary to these compositions. Although the paintings are meticulously rendered, they have much in common with abstraction in that everything is up to the picture plane with no vanishing point. The combination of this destabilizing perspective, intense color and enormous size can make the viewer feel as if he is looking at something previously familiar for the first time.
Masha Keating - "Botanical Fantasy"
Masha Keating's oil paintings move freely between abstraction and representation, reality and fantasy, imagery created by nature and her own imagination. The floral imagery takes on a fantastic and surreal quality, often combined with decorative motifs in these large scale paintings.
One finds elements of inspiration ranging from Victorian Architecture to Viking carvings, Celtic illuminations and Islamic decorations as well as great artists such as William Morris, Gustav Klimt, Georgia O’Keeffe and Salvador Dali. That said, Keating's paintings remain very fresh and original.
In this series the botanical likenesses seem to transform into sentient entities capable of independent motion. Leaves, flower petals and tendrils appear to break off and operate on their own, following one another along invisible curving pathways meandering across the paintings.
Masha Keating received her BFA from Otis College of art and design in 1999, exhibited in Los Angeles galleries from 1998 -2001, then took a 10 year sabbatical to raise a family. Their family is now living in Santa Barbara and Corridan Gallery is proud to welcome her and show her outstanding paintings.
CORRIDAN GALLERY
125 North Milpas Street, Santa Barbara CA 93103
Hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 11 to 6, or call for other hours
karen@corridan-gallery.com or (805) 966-7939