(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 shows are large in scale ranging from 40x40 to 60x72 inches. Colorful and free, these works embody each of these artists' masterful skill and creative vision birthing exuberant environments rife with playful gesture and color. The opening reception will be held on November 18th from 6-9 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 Riede's dreamy abstractions begin with a single intuitive gesture off of 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. 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 and sometimes allegories of fragility.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Claire McConaughy

Claire McConaughy is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA in painting from Columbia University.  She had solo shows in New York, including The Drawing Center, The Painting Center, Zürcher Gallery, 490 Atlantic, and Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Kansas City. Her work has been shown at numerous other venues in the Northeast and Midwest.  She received a MacDowell Fellowship, Ucross Foundation Residency, Vermont Studio Center, and Santa Fe Art Institute Artist’s Residency. Her work has been featured in Art Spiel, artcritical, White Hot Magazine, Hamptons Art Hub, and other publications.   Claire is a Professor of Visual Arts at Bergen County Community College in Paramus, NJ.

Danielle Riede

Danielle Riede grew up in the United States and Iceland. She received her BFA from the University of Virginia and her MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. She studied with Daniel Buren at the Kunstakademie Duesseldorf. Her international exhibition record includes galleries and museums in France, Mexico City, Athens, Berlin, Indianapolis, and New York. Riede received numerous awards, including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, the Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, and a New Frontiers Grant from Indiana University. She is the Randolph H. Deer Professor of Painting at Herron School of Art and Design/IUPUI.  Danielle lives and works in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Melanie Parke

Melanie Parke grew up on a small horse farm in Indiana and received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1989. Committed to expanding opportunities for fellow artists, she has initiated several artist-in-residence programs in the national parks since 1993. She hosted numerous artists from around the country between 2005-2020 at her artist retreat, The Provincial, an artist-run exhibition, and project space. Melanie had solo shows throughout the Midwest, southern states, and New York City. Melanie was awarded residencies at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in California in 1994 and Yosemite in 1996. She was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome in 2015 and 2018. She and her artist husband, Richard Kooyman, live and work in Arcadia, Michigan. This will be her first exhibition in California.

Gallery Open: 12 - 5pm, Tuesday - Saturday. 

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.