The Gallery at Towne Centre presents A Complex Nature

A Complex Nature

Featuring Artwork by Mary Magnuson and Deborah Harvard

April 5 – May 14, 2011

The Gallery at Towne Centre

Lake Forest Park

Nature is complex. So much so that it often defies a single definition. How do you capture the beauty of a sunset, or the simplicity of a single flower? Artists Mary Magnuson and Deborah Harvard have very different approaches to capturing nature, but they both do it beautifully. Ms. Magnuson’s Cliché-verre (a combination of art and photography) prints present a reverse look at landscapes while Ms. Harvard paints the natural world around her using polymer clay.

The Gallery at Towne Centre’s new exhibit A Complex Nature runs April 5 through May 14, 2011. The galley also features a stunning array of locally crafted glass, pottery, jewelry, fine art and more.

More on the Artists:

"Dryweeds" by Mary Magnuson

Mary Magnuson

Landscapes challenge me to be outside in all kinds of weather, seeing temperature and light, and the personality of a place. Sometimes I see a subject in passing and have to rely on my memory, but I prefer to spend a long time walking around and drawing. Sometimes I take random photographs. I always sketch the combined photographs until I get a drawing I want to be a reference for the final painting. My favorite landscape artist is John Constable, and I try to follow his example by studying clouds and trees, using tall or wide canvases, and experimenting with unusual compositions.

Cliche-verre is an art form as old as film photography (and used by Corot.) The photographic prints are made from a hand-drawn negative. I scan the negatives and print their inverse image digitally.

Art work by Deborah J. Harvard

Deborah J. Harvard

I was raised in National Parks as a curious, left-handed girl who knew that the rule for “Nighttime Sardines” at Volcano National Park was: only one body length into the jungle! California Redwoods, dinosaur bones and hayrides, berrying on the bluff above the Mississippi; my life introduced me to light, plants, and the colors of earth and sky.

A complimentary career as a landscape architect and garden designer have honed my eye and technical skills in understanding the natural world around me.

My “art handle” is digitARTS! I’ve tried many different, “hand built” methods to distill, abstract, and express the things I see and feel around me. Painting in polymer clay has been the most satisfactory. The clay gives me the precise color control of oil paints, the rich, tactile energy of a palette knife, and the ability to build forms in relief, to bring the picture out of the frame.

I build these paintings on a glass sheet, with the horizon the control. The edges end where they will, and I am often surprised by what is inside.

My style now is more impressionistic than earlier, trompe l’oil work featuring flowers and shells. These evocative landscapes--often, of western grasslands, Pacific Rim beaches, and Hawai'ian volcanoes--push the technical envelope of Skinner Blends and mokume gane' into the uncertain realm of raku... Come along!

The Gallery is located on the inside lower level of the Lake Forest Park Towne Centre, 17171 Bothell Way NE, Lake Forest Park, WA 98155. Hours are 12-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For information on the Shoreline-Lake Forest Park Arts Council see the webpage.

The Shoreline-Lake Forest Park Arts Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to nurture all of the arts in the community through programs and events, arts education, advocacy, and support for artists and arts organizations. Proceeds from the Gallery at Lake Forest Park Towne Centre help fund these programs and events.