Recent Paintings by Mary Connelly
Rude Gallery
May 23 - July 12, 2008
Reception: May 23, 6-9 pm
Gallery Talk: June 3, 12 - 1 pm
My interior paintings are a distillation of perception and memory, where color and light convey a world psychologically and spiritually charged. Architectural space serves as a formal and conceptual device to establish tension and duality between the interior and exterior worlds.
As “home”, interior space signifies the conditions of both entrapment and private repose. The interior also serves as a metaphor for consciousness—as container for my ruminating mind. Painting direct from observation is central to my studio practice; formal relationships--color, and space, function like a mantra or a meditation on things mutable and transcendent. Max Beckman’s words speak powerfully to this process:
“If you wish to get hold of the invisible, you must penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible. My aim is to get hold of the magic reality and to transfer this reality into painting—to make the invisible visible through reality. It may seem paradoxical, but it is, in fact, reality which forms the mystery of our existence”.
My intention as a representational painter is to re-present a space imbued with both longing and emptiness—as a chamber for mediation or contemplation. As an artist, I am driven by continual self-reflection, but the practice of perceptual painting transcends “self” through a responsive and empathetic relationship to the visual world. My work is also influenced by contemplative and philosophical literature, especially the writings of Thomas Merton, Paul Tillich and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. The power of illusionist painting is not that it tries to create a “now” reality, but because it can mirror consciousness and embody the paradoxical truths of impermanence and (in the words of Tillich) The Eternal Now.~Mary Connelly