About the artist:

Marion McClanahan's life has been one of contrast, the range of dramatic influences that have passed through her life have invested her personality with a mature grace. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma she travelled extensively throughout the Southwest and through North America and Europe with her family. Her paintings recall many of her early impressions of Michigan, Kentucky and Paris. The subjects she chooses are as varied as her life. They are ordinary enough scenes to begin with-a view from the window of her Paris studio, or a commonplace motel on Cape Cod; shacks; beaches; models casually posed in a studio. She comes to them, says Knox Martin, with "elegance, grace, sensitivity, giving to the most insignificant things a local habitation and a name. There are no insignificant subjects-all is Wonder." The poet Barbara Guest sees all the objects in these paintings bathed in an air which is not simply the air we breathe but the fruit of a free imagination. "These scenes are the work of an eye full of wonders." There is nothing dreamy or vague about this eye. It is sharp and clear and usually capable of surprises. She filters light and substance into poetically seen experiences. The paintings appear refreshingly relaxed. McClanahan's artistic approach confirms a tree flowing but firmly disciplined line which marks her work. The very intense personal vision presents a challenge to the viewer. All her images preserve the spontaneity and freshness of the original direct vision. McClanahan's paintings are so bright and lively,-so "sparkling with sunlight, warmth and joy," as David Shirey said in a New York Times review of her show at the Graham Gallery in 1972-that it is easy to some unexpected treat to be found in a corner. Tom Prideaux, writing about some of her softer more atmospheric paintings, remarked of one of them, "a memorable meeting between bland sand dunes and mild blue skies. Strictly speaking, these are pastel shades. But there is no pastel feeling in these paintings, or, if there is, it is pastel with a sting, like a baby-blue Portuguese man-of-war on a pale beige beach." The sting may be there, but no hostility. A deep serenity resides in this world, bathed in an extraordinarily delicate light. William Saroyan has written ecstatically about this light: "In Marion McClanahan's paintings, I am delighted by the fragility of the connection between light and everything else, especially people. The light is in them, as it is in everything around them... .How she manages to convey that sense of super-powerful fragility is the thing that delights eye, mind, memory, and expectation; and compels gratitude." And he concluded with these warm and wonderful and typically Saroyanesque words: "Standing and looking at a couple of dozen of her paintings in her studio on the 6th floor, 5 rue de Plaisance in Paris, I had no chdice but to feel perfectly at home in the bumbling, bungling human race. The lines and the lights, they did it." ONE-MAN SHOWS 1968 University Club, San Francisco, California 1968 Vera Lazul Gallery, Cold Spring Harbor 1970 Bolles Gallery, San Francisco, California 1972 Graham Gallery, New York 1973 Galerie Chardin, Paris 1975 Drian Galleries, London 1975 Swearingen-Byck Gallery, Louisville, Kentucky 1975 Wood-McCann Gallery, Lexingtor Kentucky 1978 Gloria Cortella, New York 1979 Island Art Center, Sea Island, Georgia GROUP EXHIBITIONS Provincetown Art Center New Directions in Art, St. Louis, Missouri Ingber Gallery, New York PRIVATE AND PUBLIC COLLECTIONS M. Diego Giacometti, Paris The Duchess of St. Albans, London Francis Tailleux, Paris Mme. Tal Coat, Cauterets, France Mr. & Mrs. Stuart Upson, Darien, Connecticut William Saroyan Mr. & Mrs. Clement Hurd, Mill Valley, California Knox Martin, New York Irwin Shaw, Kiosters, Switzerland Dr. J. Queenan, Loulville, Kentucky Christian du Manois, Paris Pierre Salinger, Paris Marion Hemily, Washington, D.C. Mr. & Mrs. Martin MacKinnon, Seattle, Washington Mr. & Mrs. Hal Every, Palm Desert Hon. & Mrs. Benjamin Kaplan, Cambridge, Massachusetts George Klauver, New York Mrs. Sevier Bonnie, Louisville, Kentucky Mrs. Arne Pettersson, Los Altos Mr. & Mrs. Royal Ferris, Dallas, Texas Musee de Dieppe, France Musse d'Aix-en-Provence, France