"Opal Landscape II"
Local abstract realist artist and Kingsport Art Guild member, Susan Connelly McClelland, has a solo exhibition Oct. 4-30 at the Renaissance Center in Kingsport, Tennessee.
McClelland received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina. The past 30 years of her career were spent as a showroom designer and professional faux painter. After moving to East Tennessee in 2010, she built In Color Studio at her home in Bluff City and switched to fine art.
She collects gemstones such as agates, jaspers, larimar and opals from local gem shows. She studies the many layers of the rocks under magnification then chooses either mixed media or encaustics to portray the stone as a three-dimensional abstract painting. Her pieces are multiple layers of joint compound, low fire clay, epoxy resin, glitter, oil paint, real crystals or encaustics with metallic leaf or shellac burns. Highly textural, her pieces show a depth and mystique that beg to be touched.
Her most recent works combine gemstones and female sculpture. Her work is shown locally at Cindy Saadeh Fine Art in Kingsport, Tennessee. The Birthplace of Country Music in Bristol, Virginia, carries her small encaustics of local mountain landscapes. Her paintings were recently juried into the Knoxville Arts and Cultural Alliance Regional Show 2019 and the Womensfund Show at the McKinney Center in Jonesborough, Tennessee, in 2017, 2018 and 2019. She was also juried into the Regional Fine Arts Show at the McKinney Center in 2017 and 2018 and 2019. She has had solo shows at Art on 16, Marion, Virginia, Shulman Gallery at Tusculumn University, Cindy Saadeh Fine Art and Weigands Fine Art in Galax, Virginia.
There will be no reception, but the gallery will be open to the public Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Mask and social distancing required. For more information visit her website at www.SusanInColor.com or chttp://www.Instagram.com/susanconnellymcclelland
