Artist Statement

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.

For more information on Mary Connelly and her work, please visit www.maryconnelly.com or cam.cudenver.edu/braggingrights/maryconnelly.htm.

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Mary's Latest Exhibition:

Topophilia: New Interiors at the WomanMade Gallery, Chicago, February 29-March 27, 2008

Past exhibitions:

Interiors and Still Places at the San Francisco MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ARTISTS GALLERY January 9-February 1

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Mary Connelly

Mary.Connelly@cudenver.edu
303.556.6866

Assistant Professor of Fine Arts
BFA Painting, Washington University
MFA, Indiana University

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Photograph above:  Baugh Road, 2006, oil on panel, 11 x 14 inches