Kathryn Markel Fine Arts (NY, NY) is pleased to announce “Ecstatic Earth,” featuring new paintings by Marilla Palmer. This will be her sixth solo exhibition with the gallery.
Palmer’s mixed-media works immortalize the temporality of nature. In all her work, but particularly the newest works on panel, nature is exalted in shimmering details that shift with light and movement. This is the first exhibition of her botanical paintings on panel, and also the first to include an underwater scene.
Her deceptively serious still lifes become playful, fantastical tableaus upon closer inspection. Delicate watercolor brushstrokes are accompanied by plastic sequins, dried petals, sumptuous fabrics, gold leaf, and more. This juxtaposition is both humorous and lovely, theatrical and erudite. Palmer cultivates her own garden that she observes for both inspiration and material. She explains, “Working so directly with nature makes it feel like I’m collaborating, but with an unpredictable partner. Who knows what will appear in my studio garden? How will the petals change when pressed or if the wet watercolor, interference paint or sequins will capture the ecstasy of what I see?”
Glittering collage elements and iridescent backgrounds add movement and lively energy to the static depictions and signify the growth and life associated with the imagery. In the work, insects, flowers, and leaves are frozen in time, their impending end suggested in the dried petals and leaves the artist incorporates. Tendrils stretch across the surface as if reaching for the sun. In her statement, when contemplating mother nature, the artist quotes Goethe, “We live in her midst and know her not. She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret.” Palmer preserves the ephemeral and depicts exuberant abundance all at once.
Marilla Palmer lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Connecticut. Her work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carlsbad Museum and Art Center, MoMA PS1, and extensively among other galleries and institutions throughout the United States.. She received her B.F.A from the Philadelphia College of Art.
For more information, please visit www.markelfinearts.com.
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