Megan Pace is an artist who explores the nature of human interactions, female identity, and the tessellation of abstract forms, through her studio practice. Pace earned her BFA with a concentration in sculpture from Kennesaw State University in 2018. She has done undergraduate research with the Master Craftsman Program at KSU and interned at iD3 Group. Since graduation, she has apprenticed at a print shop in Dallas, TX, and moved to Kansas City, MO, where she is currently building a studio, exploring new bodies of work, and seeking to find and grow an iron community in the Kansas City Area.

“I paint and draw things, but I do not work from life. Although I begin with the object, I paint and draw from measurement and memory. I choose objects with little meaning or narrative attached. They are anonymous utilitarian objects; a fan, a spring, a tire. I choose them for their formal qualities, their shape, color and geometry.

I begin by measuring the object; it’s height, width and depth. Once the dimensions are determined, I place the framework in the center of the page, adjust the drawing, establish the space, and invent the light. Then I begin to draw, and the drawing takes on a life of it’s own.

I draw and erase. Things appear and vanish. The process is one of searching, not knowing. The certainty and doubt is in the history of the surface. And the work takes on a new meaning and the subject becomes the work itself.”

-Andrew Watel

Andrew Watel grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He received an undergraduate degree in Painting from San Francisco State University in 1977 and a Master of Fine Art from Yale University in 1983. Upon graduating from Yale, he moved to New York City where he independently pursued painting and teaching. In 1993, as a founding member, he established and developed The Painting Center, an independent non-profit artist run space. He curated several shows there, including the work of such ‘painter’s painters’ as Albert York and Jake Berthot. Twenty-eight years later, The Center remains viable today and offers artists alternative exhibition space. From 2006 until 2017 he taught as an Adjunct Professor of Painting and Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design. Here he developed his own curricula for beginning and advanced painting and drawing, led seminars and supervised independent projects.
In 2018 he moved from New York to Kansas City to pursue painting full time.

Tilly Woodward graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the University of Kansas. She is Curator of Academic and Community Outreach at Grinnell College’s Faulconer Gallery, and Founding Director of the Pella Community Art Center (1989 – 2007). Her work has been exhibited in more than 191 museums and galleries nationally and can be found in museum, corporate and private collections in Israel, Ghana, Uganda, India, and throughout the United States. Collections include the Addison Gallery of American Art, Des Moines Art Center, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Meredith Corporation, University of Iowa Museum of Art, West Publishing and Vermeer Manufacturing. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including two Fellowships for Drawing from the National Endowment for the Arts, and has initiated many arts outreach projects designed to help communities address specific social issues, foster creativity, build tolerance and compassion. She is well known for her highly realistic, meticulously detailed oil paintings. 

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.