Becoming Free

Exhibition: Spring 2019. Jeff McNutt was born in Iowa in 1967 and began his artistic pursuits in 1989 while working for The Walt Disney Company. In 1991 he moved to Los Angeles and continued his art education in animation houses across Hollywood, with street artists in LA, and also at Cal Arts in Valencia, CA. In 1993, Jeff moved back to Iowa to study graduate painting at The University of Iowa where he started to merge the ideas of animation, street art, and the beauty of nature.

"The content of my work is inspired by a desire to communicate a sense of life and presence. I want my artwork to evoke ideas about creation through an engaged use of color, energy and movement.

I begin by observing landscape from all over the Midwest. I am visually inspired by the streets of Chicago, the lush green hills of Wisconsin, and Iowa’s rich landscape where Grant Wood once painted and called home. It is rich in color, spiritual and natural.

I apply and remove oil paint, oil stick, and spray paint until the painting begins to develop a history like distressed art on old brick buildings. Many of the marks on the canvas are inspired by animation sketches, adding a sense of movement and life in the work.

I believe in the spiritual nature of the creative act, and I invite the Holy Spirit into my time in the studio. I want the work to evoke a feeling of beauty, soul, and energy, and to affect a space with a sense of God’s love.”

ONCE known primarily as a sculptor based in the California Bay Area, Helen Dannelly began a new, groundbreaking series of paintings on paper after moving to Chicago in 2015. Expansive, vibrant, and complex, these abstract paintings are created using the unusual and immediate medium of translucent alcohol-based inks on Yupo, a synthetic watercolor paper. Her recent work marries a dynamic expression through gesture and color with a sense of scientific observation. These paintings seem to reference not only the underwater and ocean themes for which they are titled, but also the profound power and exuberant energy of life in all its diverse forms.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Helen Dannelly studied painting at San Francisco State University in the early nineties with Bay Area Photorealists Robert Bechtle and Richard McLean, as well as with Cherie Raciti and Teresa Stanley. She studied sculpture, including metal arts and bronze casting at the University of Minnesota, and at Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2009, she began working in encaustic which she enjoys because of its versatility. An award-winning sculptor, Dannelly’s work has been featured in exhibitions both locally and nationally. She is represented in private and public collections throughout the country.

IMAGES below are from the First Free Sanctuary Series Spring exhibition: "Spring Waters", a SOLO exhibition by Helen Dannelly. April 1 through June 30, 2018 at First Free, Chicago.