January 2011

Artspace in Raleigh, NC, Offers Works by Skyler McGee & Linda Ruth Dickinson

Artspace in Raleigh, NC, will present two new exhibits including: [im]permenance, featuring works by Skyler McGee, on view in the Lobby Gallery, from Jan. 6 - 28, 2012, and Painting: Twenty Five Years, featuring Linda Ruth Dickinson, on view in the Upfront Gallery, from Jan. 6 - 28, 2012. A reception for both exhibits will be held on Jan. 6, from 6 - 10pm.

Skyler McGee presents small works that are narratives of time, location, and substance. For McGee, they tell an ambiguous story of how we build our lives, layer by layer.

Each piece is comprised of drawings sealed by a thick layer of resin. On top of that drawing is another drawing, again sealed with resin. Once sealed, the drawings are unchangeable. Works are often six or seven layers thick.

McGee notes, “The artistic process mirrors the process of building a life, one layer at a time. As time passes we are able to observe our histories, both individual and corporate, but not alter them. With only the current layer to build upon, we become people of presence – integrating, making unity, binding disparate parts together, creating beauty.”

“It is this dynamic that the work not only catalogs, but celebrates,” adds McGee. “It embraces the tenuous nature of creating purpose when human kind is fraught with the unknowable. Through capturing the complexity of how we layer our lives, it affirms the inherent value of the process. The layering of the pieces is an homage to the complex layering of human existence, of change, and the condition of being finite. [im]permenance stands at the apex of what is and what could be, hearkening to both the beauty found in the strata of human choice.”

McGee is a mixed-media artist based in Durham, NC. She holds a BFA from Metro State College of Denver with a minor in Art History. She has also studied plein air painting on location in Giverny, France, at the home of Claude Monet. Gestural and complex, her work borders the lines of both abstraction and representation. She works in oils, resin, watercolor, fiber, graphite and encaustic. Based on imagery from the natural world, her work explores layers, and the ordering of interior and social space.

Painting: Twenty Five Years features examples of works Dickinson has created over the years as she approaches her 25th year as a painter. From realism to surrealism, watercolor to acrylic, monochromatic to imbued with intense hues, Dickinson has employed a variety of methods to create her works including dripping, pouring, and more recently, long strokes of color, for what she refers to as her “swath” paintings.

A self-taught artist born to midwestern American missionaries and raised on the island of Taiwan, Dickinson draws on her transcultural heritage to create her paintings, which are a synthesis of eastern and western thoughts, traditions and values. Translating her visions through paint on canvas or panel, Dickinson’s explorations result in abstracted imagery that is both familiar, but also beyond worldly. Dickinson’s work is found in numerous private and public collections including Christ Church Lake Forest, College of Lake County, John Deere Co., GlaxoSmithKline, and Wachovia Bank.

Artspace, a thriving visual art center located in downtown Raleigh, brings the creative process to life through inspiring and engaging education and community outreach programming, a dynamic environment of over 30 professional artists studios, and nationally acclaimed exhibitions. Approximately 95 artists hold professional memberships in the Artspace Artists Association. Thirty-five of these artists have studios located at Artspace.

Artspace is supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County, the Raleigh Arts Commission, individuals, corporations, and private foundations.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the center at 919/821-2787 or visit (www.artspacenc.org).

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