"My work is grounded in description of the observable world. Yet it is not mere description that compels me. People have a deep need to structure their environment, to exert their will on all that is around them. In the physical world that surrounds me, I observe the embodiment of contradictory forces: longing and desire for transcendence coupled with simultaneous evidence of the abject and abandoned. By presenting the tangible manifestation of these disparate forces, I hope to provide insight into what we revere and neglect. This intricate dance between embrace and abandon, beauty and its underbelly, is the subject of my work.

Part still life and part portrait, my images are hybrid compositions that combine the natural and the manufactured in an ordered tension. The interplay of subject and the abstract qualities of shape, form and color present an opportunity for me to create a correspondence between the visual and the intangible. The process of painting offers the opportunity to explore the gap between concrete reality and mystery and to reveal my discoveries to the viewer.

The work in this exhibition is from three locales: the Irish coast, the foothills of Wyoming and urban Philadelphia. All three locations have provided me with a combination of visual material that is at times beautiful, seductive, and unsettling. The paintings attempt to decipher visual and magical attributes of my subjects and present them for contemplation."

-Joan Wadleigh Curran 

Joan Wadleigh Curran's Curriculum Vitae

Read the press release here.