Siobhan McClure

 Artist Statement:

I am a storyteller. As a child, I moved frequently back and forth across the USA and back and forth across the Atlantic. This left me with a constant sense of dislocation and transience which is, in part, why I live in LA (a city that is in flux) and why I create tales of disruptive change and disorder. Growing up with fluctuating worldviews, I now constantly question visual and social perception. I am also profoundly aware of the shrinking scale of our planet in terms of communication and the interconnectedness of our actions; for we live in a world of multiple points-of-view yet often operate as if there was only one point-of-view. I despair that the rules or systems of society have become more important than those they were intended to serve. This has led me to play with the rules of perspective and observation. In my last series “In the Time of Water”, I explored what is solid and what is illusion. My current series “Passage” is an outgrowth of that. The future is dark. The old order altogether lost.

As for process, I begin my narratives with drawings (followed by glaze paintings of the same scale) and conclude with small paper sculptures. Separate but interconnected, the drawings, paintings, and sculptures provide alternative views of each story. Still, at the center of my studio practice are the oil paintings whose surfaces I encode with a combination of personal and public symbols that are influenced by European, Persian, and Indian illuminated manuscripts as well as by the panel paintings of the Northern Renaissance. The visual complexities of these artistic traditions (combining the mundane and the miraculous to tell instructive tales) guide me. Just as I cannot completely decode many of the works I admire, I do not worry if my paintings can be completely decoded by all. I am happy if the big themes are understood. Visual language has its own flow. The meaning takes time to rise to the surface.

“Have faith in wordless knowledge. I could tell you about the river or we could just get in.” Bill Callahan From the Rivers to the Oceans cd

Project Gallery:   Greg Rose:  Angeles Forest Bonsai, through April 2

Greg Rose, Tree, Gouache on Paper

In Project Room:  Opening First Thursday, April 7, 6 – 9

David Bradbury On Making Art  Nov.3, 1946-Feb. 1, 2014

I find my visual ideas in the patterns and symmetry of the natural environment, and I’m also drawn to the whimsical ways and charming appearance of our furry pets.

I earned my MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, and taught ceramics for 32 years in the Palos Verdes Unified School District.

Now I’m drifting toward two-dimensional mediums, and my recent work incorporates paint, collage elements, mixed media, found objects, and iPad drawings.

Art brings me great joy, and I want people to smile and feel happy in response.

Humor makes the world go around, and all I want to do is have fun and be silly in the studio, believing that play is the most important impetus in making art.