Michener Art Museum

Mare McClellan

PAINTER
BORN: May 14, 1961, Colonia, New Jersey

"During transitional states like dusk and dawn, I find it easiest to sense that things are not as solid as they seem. Everything is composed of vibrating particles and waves, always in formation and changing. I am interested in making paintings that call attention to these qualities of lightness and impermanence within seemingly solid appearances."

"The living breathing, presense of nature compels me to paint. The peaceful vitality and luminosity I see around me in the river, sky, fields, and trees - all at once are the source, the goal, and the means of attainment."

Mare McClellan used to be a jewelry maker, but eventually returned to painting. She gathers inspiration from the Delaware River landscape, and has spent time working in the studio of the late painter William Lathrop at Phillip's Mill in New Hope, Pennsylvania

She works on her canvases with acrylic paint applied in layers of textural pastes and transparent glazes. "Reductive methods like sanding and scraping cause and reveal patterns that form beneath the surface. The process echoes the endless cycles of creation in nature, building up and dissolving through time and space. Noticing the subtle revelations is very meaningful to me," says McClellan.

She claims the influences of William Lathrop, Agnes Martin, and Robert Irwin and names colleagues as Fredericka Foster, Edie Sharp, Jane Gilday, Suzanne Douglass, Pat Martin, and Kevin Broad.