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17/2/2011

Peggy Macnamara / Renee McGinnis / Thomas C. Jackson

Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago

Peggy Macnamara
Ruskin's Nine: Bird Compositions

John Ruskin’s The Elements of Drawing was published in 1857. In the third chapter, Letter III, On Colour and Composition, he introduces his nine laws of composition. Macnamara refers to these laws as a sort of checklist for what is right in a composition. Still, when painting flocks of birds, she adjusts the compositions to suit her sensibilities. But nothing works as well as when she remains true to the flock’s particular choreography. As she finishes each piece Macnamara discovers that each arrangement adheres to one or more of Ruskin’s Laws of composition. She knows they flock in certain ways to save energy and insure the success of the species, not to please the viewer. The birds just seem to get it right. Macnamara is the Artist-in-Residence at the Field Museum.

Renee McGinnis
Views from the International Park System

The derelict structures McGinnis paints are surrounded by topiary gardens of a misdirected beauty, suggesting man's infallible desire to control nature. The once luxurious ocean liners she renders have great steel panels salvaged from their broken hulls, where they sit cracked and beached in a deceptively beautiful marshland. The disordered topiaries surround- ing their dilapidated subjects are a thriving deep emerald green. With her lush hand, McGinnis is interested in laying bare two great forces in the universe: electromagnetism and gravity. The formidable intelligence and energy of man, and what he builds and tries to control, is all for naught in this macro world view. To examine her ideas further.... she dissects and magnifies the topiary sections. These are the Unified Field Theory works: a metaphorical theory of everything. In these micro-views McGinnis places the viewer directly over a circular symmetry of dazzling insects that stand in for precious jewels. When you see this exhibition of precise paintings you’ll wonder if you are seeing a close up of an atom or the universe itself. McGinnis recently won the Richard H. Driehaus prize for representational art in the Art Loop Open.

Thomas C. Jackson
Child’s Play

When one thinks about what appeals to Americans today in movies, politics, celebrities, food, etc., people seem to want to be attracted to – and repelled by images simultaneously. Jackson’s sometimes voyeuristic, split-narrative compositions reflect America’s channel-changing attention span and state of mind. These compositions combine two images into a single artwork. Jackson wants the viewer to look for connections between images, inciting a search of their own past to construct a narrative linking these images. Child’s Play exists at the intersection of the naïve spontaneity of childhood and the deliberate control of adults. It is here that instinct meets experience. Jackson provokes thought and discussion of social issues in these collisions of viewpoints. Jackson has multiple images in the current issue of OYEZ, a literary journal produced by Roosevelt University, Chicago.

Opening Friday, February 18th 5 - 8 pm

Packer Schopf Gallery
942 W. Lake St Chicago, IL 60607
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11:00am to 5:30pm
Free admission

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