Chamber Singers Host Art Opening at CAC Today

The presents “Two Painters: Eilis Crean and Brian Taylor” during the month of April. This exhibition is on view through April 29 and features two contemporary painters concerned with the temporal and poignant aspects of the fleeting moment. 

The reception, hosted by the Douglas County Chamber Singers, is today, from 6 until 8 p.m., at the Cultural Arts Center. A special gallery talk and exhibition tour will be offered on Sunday, April 29, from 3 until 5 p.m. Both events are free and open to the general public.

Originally from Ireland, Eilis Crean earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland in 1981, and her Masters of Fine Arts from the Ernst Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University, Atlanta in 2000. She now is Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of West Georgia in Carrollton. Crean has exhibited her work in the Manifest Research Gallery and Drawing Center‘s International Painting Annual 1,  Exhibition-in-Print in Cincinnati,  Decatur Fine Arts Exhibition at Dalton Gallery in Atlanta (where she was awarded “Best In Show”), QX.net Nude International at Lexington Art League in Kentucky,   “Little Things Mean a Lot” at Atlanta’s Swan Coach House,  “Vital Chords - Land, Identity and Myth in Contemporary Irish Art” at Sturgis Library Gallery at Kennesaw State University, and the French Embassy in Dublin, Ireland.  Her work is represented in the State collections of Ireland, France, and Latvia as well as in numerous private collections in the United States and Ireland.

Crean’s work illustrates the fragility of perception and memory. Her captivating oil paintings are created from snapshots taken in the midst of intimate social gatherings, conversations and Skype images. Because the viewer is not privy to the actual moment, the present significance of the individuals and actions within the paintings dissolve into ambiguity and time, thus exposing, as Crean puts it, “the picturing of our lives as a separation from lived experience.” In the Scale of Time series, small moments of several birthday celebrations are captured within six paintings through impressionistic brushstrokes characteristic of Crean’s painting style. The flowing forms of the characters promote the sense of an action photographed and intermix with a deep color palette that enriches each canvas and adds to the intimacy of the works’ settings. This series is complimented by Crean’s Embarkation for Home and Conversation a la Mode series, also displayed in the current exhibition.

A graduate of The University of Memphis with Bachelors and Masters degrees in Studio Art, Brian Taylor He is a Professor of Art at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia, currently serving as the Chair of the Art Department. Taylor has exhibited nationally and internationally in locations ranging from Jefferson City in Tennessee to the Czech Republic. He has received several grants to continue his work including, most recently, the 2009 Liquetex Corp Individual Artist Grant.

Taylor’s acrylic series, Translated Landscapes, also captures a snapshot in time. However, Taylor is not interested in the loss of specificities of the moment, but in the retention of it. Bright, vibrant colors mingle with large expressive gestures as Taylor attempts to capture in poetic form the exuberance of emotions created through fleeting encounters with the natural world. Taylor emphasizes that his paintings are not about his personal feelings, but about the “romanticism” of nature in itself.  In Deep Forest Clearing: to be always in that here which is always farther away, a landscape is translated into an abstraction of moving, sharp strokes immersed in a canvas of warm yellows, greens and oranges. In Ocean Life: keeping the abandoned language of dreams, deep blues and bright purples along with broad strokes become the prominent features, but the vivacity of tone and expression remain, as it does within all of Taylor’s exhibited work.