San Anselmo, CA – Garvey|Simon is pleased to announce the opening of the three-woman exhibition, Marking Impressions, on view at 538 San Anselmo Ave, San Anselmo, CA 94960, from November 15 – December 30th, 2022.  Marking Impressions will feature oil paintings by Claire McConaughy, Danielle Riede, and Melanie Parke. Paintings in the show range from 40×40 to 60×72 inches. These artists wield their masterful skill and creative vision, birthing exuberant environments rife with playful gesture and color. The opening reception will be held on November 18th from 6-8 pm.

Claire McConaughy’s boldly expressive and vibrant landscape paintings evoke poetic moments connected to the present and past. Her work explores the history of the landscape, space, mystery, humanity, and beauty. Using a combination of painted passages and fluidly painted lines, her process allows for a variety of marks and layering of imagery, with interlacing images of trees, branches, and visions of woods. The layers and color in her paintings create spatial tensions and surprising metaphors. McConaughy depicts an East Coast landscape with an imaginative lens and a predilection for reengineering the observed environment, moving or abstracting depth of field, and adding provocative swaths of color. 

Danielle Reide’s dreamy abstractions begin with a single intuitive gesture off the canvas and then a recording of that same movement in paint. Inspired by the ephemerality of dance, her staccato marks morph as she moves across the surface of the canvas, sometimes breaking into unexpected fractals or radials. Luminous swirls of colorful striations entangle and integrate as called into imagination by movements of her body. Her paintings appear to be in motion like the undulations of the ocean waves.  Blazes of color envelop the canvas in arcs, dives, and swells, creating a rippling composition of color and light. 

Melanie Parke’s lush paintings combine landscape, interior, and still-life elements. Parke reconstructs familiar interiors and filters them through the ideology of memory.  She sets up the space intuitively, with broad marks and textured gestures, then pieces together arrangements to compose a homespun narrative. Her subjects often center on domestic interiors, rustic tables, entryways, window nooks, decorative objects, and gardens with the intent to suggest safe gathering spots. Flowers representing friendships and the women in her life are often the center of her work. The presence of birds suggests curiosity and wonder, sometimes allegories of fragility, sometimes euphoria.  

For more information or high-resolution images, please get in touch with Catherine Garvey Simon at Catherine@garveysimon.com or Liz Garvey at Liz@garveysimon.com or call 415-720-9252.

https://www.garveysimon.com/exhibitions/marking-impressions