Most of the folks who came out for our grand opening festivities have missed a large part of the experience with both the new gallery space and Karen McClanahan's work. There is always much more than first meets the eye within the works and in many ways the paintings can be considered "alive." Lines vibrate, disintegrate, shift colors and seemingly bend depending on the distance and angle taken from the paintings, resulting in a cascading depth within the volume of each canvas. The paintings truly cannot be taken in from a single vantage point either. The attentive viewer finds his eye being drawn to specific attributes of each painting depending on the distance away from and angle of vision. Once these dynamic properties are revealed, attention returns to specific points within the canvas, often obsessively and as if by a steady, compulsive force. McClanahan further enriches the dialogue within her work and the exhibition environment by creating triptych groupings where canvases of different scale and orientation relate to one another in a communal manner.
Karen has also put together a gem of a catalog, limited to only 11 copies and affordably priced, with each containing a miniature version of one of the paintings from the exhibition. The catalog reveals sketches for each of the paintings in the exhibition in detail and in a manner that greatly informs the artist's process behind the work. We encourage all to take a closer look at this package as well, it will someday surely be a collector's item.
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