Show dates: September 17th - October 9th
Opening reception: Saturday, September 17th, 6-10pm
Artist talk: Sunday, October 9th, 2pm
This series of paintings by John Mulvany weaves together events - remembered, recounted, or directly experienced into an allegorical narrative documenting a singular imagined event set over a 24-hour period in the desert and mountains along the border of Texas and Mexico.
“The Desert is a strange and complex place, at once beautiful, dangerous, and mysterious. When I first visited Texas in the late 1990’s I took my first trip to Big Bend on the US-Mexico border. The heat, the extraordinary light, the intense silence, the long blue shadows, it was the most exotic and intense landscape I had ever experienced. The narrative strands in desert mythology - a menacing heat, geological strangeness, and the ongoing struggle of humans and animals trying to engage, traverse, or just survive the land- make this a very compelling subject for me as an artist.
Landscape, as it relates to painting, has morphed in recent years from what might seem on the surface to be an archaic subject for artists into something much more vital and alive in the 21st century. Our relationship to the natural world is inexorably changing before our eyes. Where in the not-so-distant past we may have had the perception of ourselves as somehow existing outside of nature, finally realize that we are now at the mercy of potentially catastrophic changes in the climate. Art in general and painting particularly invite us to consider and grapple with the facts of life and death on our planet in new and profound ways. My recent work engages with our relatively new state of waking up to the climate crisis.”
- John Mulvany
