Cynthia Ona Innis Betwixt, New Paintings and Drawings 30 October – 18 December 2010 Walter Maciel Gallery will present a solo show entitled Betwixt by Cynthia Ona Innis. The new series consists of a range of materials and techniques that challenge notions of painting verses drawing. The work is depicted on canvas, satin, vinyl, wood panel and paper and manipulated with stained pigments, detailed line drawing and collaged shapes to create patterns of visual information. The subject of the work continues to be influenced ... Read more

Cynthia Ona Innis
Betwixt, New Paintings and Drawings
30 October – 18 December 2010

Walter Maciel Gallery will present a solo show entitled Betwixt by Cynthia Ona Innis. The new series consists of a range of materials and techniques that challenge notions of painting verses drawing. The work is depicted on canvas, satin, vinyl, wood panel and paper and manipulated with stained pigments, detailed line drawing and collaged shapes to create patterns of visual information.

The subject of the work continues to be influenced by the cycles of nature and the investigation of forms under transformation. Exposing a transitional pivot—a moment of exchange as one thing becomes another—the surging biomorphic organisms suggest a physical and botanical reference amidst an environment caught in flux. The markings are indicative of growth stages and changes within plant and animal life during the course of each season. Rather than interpreting scientific investigations, the organic compositions are loose abstractions that examine the implications of process and experience.

Elements in nature change with the coming of a new season and the rebirth continues each year. Innis explores the tension between sexual/reproductive, stiff/limp/buoyant, wet/dry, fresh/spent through a narrative created with drawing, paint and collage. The materials include the use of satin, velvet and vinyl fabrics layered with ink and acrylic pigments while maintaining a strong emphasis on line. The compositions are built up to create areas of texture that are enhanced by the reaction to light. The different palettes in the works appropriately contradict each other to represent the four seasons. Hues of hot pink and electric orange are created with pigments on satin and canvas to represent summer while icy white and topaz blue are made with stains on vinyl and velvet to denote winter. The mood of fall is characterized by colors of burnt sienna, muted pink and ochre and spring is represented with shades of mint green, opaque white and faint yellow.

The controlled areas of collage nicely balance the spontaneity of the poured stains with tightly rendered clusters or pod-like forms interacting in unison. From these biomorphic shapes, a series of linkage begins with the use of drawn lines and patterning. Some of the works are abruptly interrupted with a separation to show a comparison of application, contour and palette. This is evident in the work entitled Melt with the upper portion displaying a wing-like structure layered in soft colored collaged materials. The bottom portion contradicts the pictorial field with an active stain of white pigment spiraling down over a cluster of tightly organized shapes drawn in saturated brown hues. A similar configuration exists in the work Link with the upper portion displaying a yellow cluster that is connected to line drawings stretched out either side of the surface against a creamy vinyl background with oval gray markings. The bottom area displays a curved sequence of red lines that bleed out at the edges across a muted pink circular shape.

Innis received a MFA in Painting from Rutgers University and a BA in Studio Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work is included in many public collections including the Berkeley Art Museum, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, San Jose Museum of Art, Newark, NJ Public Library, Microsoft Corporation and J. Crew Corporation. Innis has received two James D. Phelan Awards, one in Painting in 1991 and the other in Printmaking in 2005. She recently completed two site specific paintings for a new juvenile justice center in Alameda County and her work was placed in a new city library in Lafayette, California. Innis’s work has been acquired as part of the Art-in-Embassies program and is in the collection of the US Embassy in Riga, Latvia. Her work is also in several prominent private collections in the US.