NYAB Event - Marcelyn McNeil “Lookers”

Marcelyn McNeil “Lookers”

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts

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Kathryn Markel Fine Arts presents Lookers, which features new paintings and works on paper by Houston based artist, Marcelyn McNeil.
Marcelyn McNeil synergizes the dissonant elements of rigid lines and soft shapes, neutral tones and bright colors to make bold, yet quietly confident paintings. Explorative in their color relationships, her large paintings use chromatic contrasts to create a shifting sense of depth rather than shading and modeling. Forms that are compositionally in one place are pulled forward or backward by their hue or lack thereof.
Her forms become animated, volleying for their space on the canvas and leaning ever so slightly towards the peculiar.

She starts her work by developing two or three simple forms based on their ability to engage one another and make for a dynamic relationship. Pouring the paint across the canvas, she tapes off areas to create hard lines, but allows unintended drips to survive in the final piece. Fresh and alive, she does not make marks as much as she fashions surfaces, the immediacy of which reveals the energy and thought process behind them.

Considering a sense of “flatness” plays a major role in her painting, though her compositions purposefully create space and volume. Heightening compositional and color tensions give her planar, buoyant forms a sense of weight. The charismatic arrangement of shape, color and line encourages a connection to the viewer. Each will see their own interpretation of the subject, imparting their own feelings and experiences onto McNeil’s compositions.

Marcelyn McNeil received her BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her work is frequently exhibited throughout Texas and in New York City. She is currently part of the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program and just received the Artist of the Year award from the Decorative Center in Houston for 2015.