October Issue 1999
Works by Mary Bentz Gilkerson Featured at City Art Gallery
City Art Gallery, located in Columbia's Historic Congaree Vista,
is featuring the exhibit, Swan Lake, a series of drawings
and paintings by Mary Bentz Gilkerson, though Oct. 31.
Mary Gilkerson's new works are influenced somewhat by the ballet
Swan Lake. She also draws from myths, stories, and legends
of the swan from many different cultures, but as in most fairy
tales there is an undercurrent of darkness. Gilkerson's strength
not only lies in her knowledge of the swan, but her ability to
convey this darkness or edginess with her use of different mediums.
Her sensual brushwork, her mastery of digital imagery, and photography
creates realistic yet dreamlike paintings.
Gilkerson says of the exhibit, "I think of my work as the intersection of its sources- myth and fairy tale meet fiction and fact. This makes me something of a narrative artist, but not in the traditional linear illustrative sense of this layered experience of "reality" from all sorts of "unreal" things seemingly disconnected things."
"The way I put my paintings and drawings reflects this layered reality. I use different types of representation- photography, digital imaging, photocopying as well as more traditional drawing and painting techniques - to create a sense of this layered experience of reality."
A native of Columbia, Gilkerson has an MFA degree from the University of South Carolina and is an Associate Professor of Art at Columbia College. She also taught at Lander University. She has exhibited her work at Francis Marion University, Columbia College, Florence Museum of Art, Greenville County Museum, the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL, and the State Museum's Triennial '92, in Columbia.
For further information check our SC Commercial Gallery listings
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