Archived Exhibition

MMGalleries is proud to present Liquid Line,  a solo exhibition of oil paintings by Texas artist Connie Connally.   In our Salon we are showing Lightscapes a photography and mixed media exhibition by local artist David Magnusson. The exhibition opens on January 12 and runs through March 8, 2008.

Liquid Line, Connie Connally’s most recent oil impressions of water landscapes painted ‘en plein air’ in Italy and Southern California, quickly fascinate the viewer through the boldness of its colorful strokes and lines.  Connally captures nature’s rhythm and the many natures of water by building linear structures and flowing forms in a personal language of painterly marks. Her fluid and self-confident stroke, her color palette and expressive gesture make the painting come alive with movement and energy, creating a rich dialog between the stillness of the canvas and the motion of the waves.

For Connally, the most difficult part is painting on the spot; taking in the imagery of the shifting waters and glancing back to an empty canvas.  She says: ”…it presses my patience to stay objective to the painting in the process of being constructed while looking at the subject which is complete, and most often in motion.” . To contain the fluid nature of water on the perimeters of a canvas is unattainable. Connally’s desire instead is to immerse the viewer completely in the changing pools of her paintings: from the salt marsh lily fields of the New England coast to the romantic magenta canals of a Venetian sunset. A figurative artist in the past, Connally successfully renewed her artistic practices in order to fearlessly turn landscapes into wonderful abstractions.  Her large-scale oil paintings are a striking response to her connection with the environment—witnessing her personal closeness to the subject matter, which no photograph could preserve.

Originally from Oklahoma, Connie Connally shares her time between Dallas, TX and Southern California. She shows in Texas, California, and New York, and has won several awards nationwide

In Lightscapes, David Magnusson employs the intentional use of soft focus.  Using wide apertures to maximize the ‘bokeh’—the quality of blur of the out-of-focus area of an image—he seeks images that offer a contrasting balance between light and form.
After digitizing the photograph, nine individual archival pigment prints are bonded onto wood panels.  Resin is then carefully applied and set with a propane torch to create the signature hi-gloss surface.  These nine square panels, linked together to build a larger whole, provide no sharp details or place to land beyond the grid they form, so that the viewer is visually suspended in a landscape that dissolves the boundary between an apparently concrete world and the transcendent nature of light.

Born in Chicago, David Magnusson moved to San Francisco 24 years ago. He has studied photography and art history at the Academy of Art College, and has shown extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A reception for the artists will be held on Saturday, January 12, 2008 from 2:00 to 4:00pm.