Claire McConaughy’s works are a combination of elements that make poetic moments connected to the present and past. Her paintings are reactions to the process of painting and the history of landscape. Using a combination of painted passages and fluidly drawn lines her process allows for a variety of marks and layering of imagery with shapes giving way to lines and interlacing of imagery. The layers and use of color in her paintings create spatial tensions and surprising metaphors. These works continue in the lineage of landscape painting, and also come from McConaughy’s early experiences in rural mountain woods and life in New York City.

Claire McConaughy is a painter who lives and works in New York. She earned her MFA in painting from Columbia University and her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University. She has exhibited in galleries including “Selections 45” at The Drawing Center, “not so far away” at The Painting Center, “Persona” at the Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery, College of St. Elizabeth, “Eleven Women of Spirit” at Zürcher Gallery and others. She received a Ucross Foundation Residency and Santa Fe Art Institute Artist’s Residency. Her work has been reviewed in artcritical, White Hot Magazine, Hamptons Art Hub and other publications.

For over a decade McConaughy was on the staff of New Observations Magazine, a non-profit art journal. McConaughy is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Bergen Community College. Her experience as an educator includes adjunct teaching at the School of Visual Arts and Marymount Manhattan College.

I paint landscapes shaped by internal and external conditions I experience. I question how to make sense of and find closure in a world constantly evolving, a world where everyone and everything continuously grows. My painting process mimics my body’s movement as I create spaces of wonder and apprehension. Paint becomes my vehicle for contemplating change. I hope to remember that the act of transformation can be an overwhelming, terrifying, and surprisingly beautiful process.

What can grow does not always bloom, and what falls apart does not remain in pieces. 

Artist Statement

I explore internal landscapes constructed from my environment, the human body, memories, and witnessing change through growth and destruction. Through my paintings and drawings, I question how to handle change when no one can ever fully predict or prepare for what the future holds. I often feel lost in the transition of change and the overwhelming, terrifying, and surprisingly beautiful spaces that can emerge from both malignant and benevolent growth. My process starts with painting from observation. I study nature, self-portraits, and the human figure collecting information like color palettes, textures, and forms that later merge into unknown internal landscapes. Working in this manner allows for the exploration of consciousness and documents my reactions to the constantly changing world we live in.

Artist Bio

Hannah Lindo is an oil painter from Garden City, Kansas who received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Fort Hays State University in 2017 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Kansas in 2022. Lindo’s work is inspired by the act of looking and discovery, her paintings are observations from nature and the human body, and encourage the viewer to question their own intrigue when looking.

Join us at the Belger Glass Annex (1219. East 19th St.) this First Friday, June 3 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm for a free glassblowing demonstration led by Robert Flowers. Watch as a team of glassblowers heat and shape hot glass into a work of art. This demonstration is an open-house-style event, so pop in for a little while or stay the entire time!

In addition to the glass demo, Belger Arts has two new exhibitions opening at the Belger Crane Yard Gallery (2011 Tracy Ave.) including the annual resident artist exhibition GroundWork. New Arrivals and Robert Stackhouse: Passages continue at the Belger Arts Center (2100 Walnut St.). Spend First Friday with Belger Arts — all three Belger Arts locations are within five minutes of each other!

Belger Arts annual resident exhibition includes work by current Artists in Residence: Summer Brooks, Elaine Buss, Eleanor Foy, Sun Young Park, Adams Puryear, and Nicole Woodard. For the six artists, the past year has been one of processing and navigating uncertainty, while persistently evolving, creatively thriving, and laying the “groundwork” for what’s to come.

Summer Brooks’ figurative depictions of black women challenge constraining ideals of beauty. Pressed and carved hair textures, confront stereotypes and aesthetic standards, while her use of materials such as India ink and spray foam challenge the conventions of the ceramics medium. Elaine Buss’ sculptural forms include symbols that serve as a visual language that reveals her fascination with knowing and exploring. Her work invites the viewer to experience what has informed, comforted, and humbled her. Eleanor Foy’s work is heavily inspired by the American West. For Foy, Westerns embody and perpetuate the violence of our colonial past, and underscore our relationship to history, land, and language. Foy considers the construction of her lamps and sculptures an indulgence and a criticism of romantic Americana. Sun Young Park combines clay and non-clay materials to create large, abstract sculptures that reflect how she processes and translates her reality and explores the duality of the material and the conceptual. Adams Puryear documents pop and internet culture, combining traditional techniques and contemporary imagery inspired by the internet’s “anti-filter.” Nicole Woodard creates representations of the human experience by decorating her abstracted figurative busts and heads with drawings that reveal human resilience.

Belger Crane Yard Studios continues to host national and international artists through its Artists in Residence program. A residency provides ceramic artists the opportunity to expand their body of work or create a special project that may be outside of the scope of their routine studio practice.