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ARTIST STATEMENT Between Ruin and Renewal Anna Morgan McClellan is a mixed media artist whose work features various painting, drawing and collage techniques. Her process relies heavily on drawing with color field backgrounds or collaged environments providing support for the images. With each series, McClellan explores muted palettes and isolated images leading the viewer into quiet places in which to contemplate content and appreciate detail. The works are structured around the manipulation of visual textures and the conceptual idea of "surfaces" as tools of preservation. These landscapes serve as both traditional studies of organic matter as well as conceptual environments capturing the deterioration of time and place. McClellan explores that fragile time cycle between the ruin and the renewal of an object or environment; a cycle that acknowledges the existence of sorrows as well as the achievement of growth through them.
Art Ventures Grant from The Community Foundation Inc. The series Low Yards focuses on the natural cycles of Southeastern regional environments and developed out of a desire to shift from the traditional concepts of representing the “ideal” in landscapes. The works give opportunity to the uncommon and overlooked and acknowledge the changes present in the development and destruction of the natural world. Starting out in this series I was removing the subject matter (dried leaves, twigs, seed pods) from environments in North Carolina and bringing them home to be placed in a traditional studio still-life setting. The more I work with the objects I realize this displacement sterilizes the qualities that give them their original intrigue. My new work reflects the immediacy of working in nature with drawing media in order to create a stronger narrative within the drawings and a more accurate artistic “footprint” of my being a pure observer of natural cycles.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY Anna M. McClellan received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from the University of North Florida and a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting/drawing from Florida State University. She currently teaches studio art for the University of North Florida as an Adjunct Instructor. McClellan served Jacksonville Public Schools as Artist-in-Residence, a one year joint residency sponsored by the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville and the Duval County School system, for the 2004-2005 school year. She has taught at both Florida Community College at Jacksonville and the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens and is the 2008 recipient of an Art Ventures Grant funded by The Community Foundation, Inc. of Jacksonville.
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