The Azarian McCullough Art Gallery at St. Thomas Aquinas College is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Kellyann Monaghan titled Developing Conditions: Recent Landscape Paintings and Prints. This new body of work seeks to expand the field of landscape painting by developing new combinations of conceptual intensity, saturated color, and emotional tenor.
Developing Conditions: Recent Landscape Paintings and Prints, runs from Wednesday, February 22 to Wednesday, April 12, 2023.
There will be a reception for the artist on Wednesday, March 29 from 4:00-5:30 PM.
These recent paintings and prints explore the man-made and natural disasters that have engulfed a once idyllic or sylvan landscape. Arresting imagery of fire, destruction, and desolation speaks to the modern tension of humans versus nature. Through her work, Monaghan tackles the difficult questions of how much wanton destruction of our planet we can sustain before the earth itself completely revolts. The paintings are meant to provoke such troubling questions and implicate the viewer in this historical drama.
The stormy weather and powerful climate conditions permeating the landscape are a natural trajectory in Monaghan’s painting. The surface of the landscape paintings erupts with textured and expressive gestural marks, which are depictions of radical weather events. Monaghan says: “I find unexpected beauty out of the destructive qualities of the weather. The weather is an instinctive inspiration for my tendencies as an “alla prima” painter…”
Monaghan’s paintings are not just a visual depiction of nature but a symbolic representation of the human condition. Also working in monoprints, these unique painterly expressions use quick, gestural, and evocative mark-making to convey such deep and troubling questions of climate change and human’s role in the destruction of our planet.
Monaghan is a Professor and Chair of the Art and Art History department at Adelphi University. She holds a BFA from the Moore College of Art and an MFA from Brooklyn College. She lives and works in New York City.
The Gallery is open Mondays from 1:00-4:00 PM, Tuesdays from 12:00-5:00 PM, Wednesdays from 10:00 AM-5:00 PM, Thursdays from 3:00-6:00 PM, and by appointment.
Contact: Timothy Hull of the Azarian McCullough Art Gallery, thull@stac.edu.
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