Christina McNearny's "Modello" series, at Tucson Int'l Airport Gallery

One of Christina's 36 artworks at her show at Tucson International Airport Gallery

Artist Christina McNearny has an exhibit of 36 works of art, currently showing that the Gallery inside the Tucson International Airport. About five years ago, the gallery at the airport was the THE art destination for airport travelers. Now, every gallery in town seems to have it's own wall space at the airport. From tip to tail, the airport has become like a mall of local galleries.  This has added a lot to the culture of the airport, but it's also made it a little more difficult to find the original airport gallery! That original airport gallery is where you'll find Christina's work.

The work here is a combination of monoprint, painted washes, color photocopy transfer (it appears), sprayed shapes over stencils or masks, and then globs of swirled and dribbled paint.  The title of her exhibit includes the word "gravity", probably as an acknowledgement that gravity helped her create those dribble effects!  If I was to describe Christina's work, I'd say that it was "surrealist printmaking" because of it simultaneous automatic and dream-like quality.

This is a show about texture and pattern, and functions as a showcase for a variety of alternative printmaking techniques.  The show is divided into four bodies of work: "walking", "desert", "Hurricane Ike", and "Relative Size".  As a whole, the exhibit is of one piece. Christina is very consistent in her methods.  They're all composed of a series of layers, and each layer is made up of a different printmaking techniques.

close up of Christina's techniques (from her "Lizard Skin" piece):

It appears to me that her paintings all start with a monoprint as a foundation. (For those who don't know, a monoprint is where you paint with printing ink directly onto a sheet of acrylic, put a piece of paper over it, and run it through a printing press. The resulting print on the paper is called a "monoprint", since you just make one copy). 

There are very few actual brush strokes in these paintings. Most of this work is the result of pours, prints, mists, stamps, and torn edges.  There's an "automatic" quality to this work, where the compositions often feel found or discovered as the artist is working. 

"Unexpected Arrival"

 "Unexpected Arrival" is a small painting, which has three basic things happening in it. First, there's the purple tinted background, flecked with white paint. (Flecks and sprays of paint are one of the texture-creating methods that Christina uses in this work.) On top of this, she lays down a series of blue and purple circles, linked in a chain-like fashion. And on top of that, a big bluish blob of paint, with a white dribble that looks like melting whipped cream. 

"After Image"

The painting "After Image" is a good illustration of Christina's layered approach: the first layer (the yellow background)is painted;  on top of that is the next layer: the orange patterns  (probably) created with color xerox transfers. The top layer (that is, the foreground) is made of bright green and blue paint that appears to have been dribbled on and manipulated with a stick.  When you look at this piece up close the variety of texture and detail can be a bit overwhelming because there's so much to look at, but from afar, the painting organizes itself into clusters of dark and light shapes, and that's what gives it its composition.

"Cove"

My favorite painting in the exhibit is a large piece, titled "Cove". I think I like it for the abundance of that sprayed and stenciled appearance: I've always liked that look! But formally speaking, I think that this piece is organized very well: it's got a nice distribution of dark and light shapes, and I like it for all of its hard edges. When you're working with as much texture and pattern as Christina is in these paintings, it's easy for the eye to get overwhelmed. Those broad areas of hard-edged solid shapes serve to hold things together; they offer some spaces that are tamed down a bit. This picture also has a self-illuminating quality.  The brightest and darkest places in this picture are right next to each other (just off-center), so that also provides a center of interest.

"Daydream"

The most interesting painting in the show, for me, is "Daydream". It's interesting because it looks like she's used paint to create a printed effect. The background layer is that yellow and orange pattern. I looked at it closely, and it appears to have been made with paint pours and dribbles, into which the artist painted little orange circles in all of the blank spaces; that created the initial pattern for the background. The blue swoosh-like shape in the center is made with a combination of the swoosh of a dry brush, and some atomized paint wash sprayed over a mask or a stencil.  Other masked and sprayed areas are visible at the bottom of this painting.  This one has a "landscape" composition, with the bright detail at the top of the picture serving as the sky, the blue shapes in the middle resembling some sort of creature, and the dark shapes at the bottom looking like mountains.

"Shift"

"Shift is a cute little painting on wood (about 9" x 12" in size) that has a bright happy feel.  The cyan, yellow, and magenta colors, along with the torn edges remind of the perky days of New Wave pop. This would have made a great dust jacked for an EP back in the day....

"Snake in the Lake"

"Snake in the Lake" is another work that I'm drawn to. I like it for its simplicity.  She's limited herself to just two techniques: monoprint and masked-off-sprayed-on areas. I'm guessing that the yellow shape is the snake in the lake.

Check it out! Christina McNearny's "Modello" exhibit, at the Tucson International Airport Gallery! (And remember to get your parking ticket validated!)