Image courtesy of Sullivan Goss Gallery
SANTA BARBARA — Sullivan Goss is pleased to announce the gallery’s third solo exhibition for realist painter MARY-AUSTIN KLEIN.
With a keen eye for atmosphere, light, and the unmistakable character of the Southern California landscape, Klein paints places that feel both immediately recognizable and somehow suspended outside of time. Most of her work exhibits a blue-skies-ahead vibe, but occasionally storm clouds appear over the desert or the fog rolls onto the shoreline, putting the kibosh on a perfect beach day.
Uncanny in their clarity, Klein’s skies and horizons possess an almost impossible depth. The usually hazy atmosphere of the horizon is rendered perfectly visible. Mary-Austin lets us see all the way to infinity.
Moving between Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and the Mojave Desert, Klein captures the icons of all three environments: palm trees bending in the wind, wide swaths of coastal shoreline, and quiet vistas of desert valleys and mountains. Her paintings are populated sparingly, if at all, by people. Instead, the landscapes themselves take center stage, becoming meditations on nature, weather, light, and the immense expanse of the sky. Yet Klein’s worlds are not entirely untouched. Cars, trains, and, in this exhibition, the Goodyear Blimp make appearances—objects that, unlike mountains and clouds, require people to make them function. Their presence adds a subtle human narrative to otherwise expansive and contemplative scenes.
Mary-Austin found inspiration in the California landscape at an early age. She was educated at Otis Art Institute and has been a resident of the Echo Park district in Los Angeles for more than thirty years, while spending large amounts of time walking the beaches and trails of Santa Barbara.
Mary-Austin Klein will be present at the 1st Thursday reception on October 1st.Come meet the artist and celebrate this new body of work.