Darren Mulvenna's Upcoming Show at Brunswick Community College.

Darren Mulvenna will be showing his recent paintings in the Dean's Gallery at Brunswick Community College.  The opening reception will be 5pm until 6pm on Wednesday March 16th.

Mulvenna's work embraces the patterns of Nature both in subject matter and in the development of his paintings.  Layers of paint and imagery emerge and recede, darken, glow from within, intensify, push and fade; the process searches out harmony in the environment, seeks to distill a rhythm in visual essence.  The paintings seem to exist comfortably in their frames, content & still, before pulsing back out with something new.  Environments are familiar despite the disconnect from common appearance, his surreal landscapes being slightly abstracted (maybe skewed is a better word), moving and dancing like dream-images following a hike in the woods.  One recognizes immediately the living scenes, a bather swimming in an ebbing aquatic light, a female torso rapt in a transcendent light, a classical dancer juxtaposed in a brackish chiaroscuro.  Mulvenna's saturation of life, his vivacity, is cathartic in the vibrant palette and the easy imagery, his figures flying playfully across lush fields and schools of fish languidly pushed in current through a diptych.

Mulvenna's work is life affirming.  One can see his own efforts in connecting to Nature, in finding his place within the complex weave of things, and then transcribing that marvel into these paintings.  His work honestly derives from an artist searching for something that is universal and relate-able, and it does so with glimpses of beauty that elevate the viewer for a fine moment.

work and work and non-august august.

faux-tigue or true overtraining?
here I am in august, burnt out on the burnt end of running routes and busy season at my job and less sleep than when I was strung out and anyway—runs are not feeling good. it is hot as hell. the effort required in a six mile circuit is nearly heroic. the mind will not still for long periods of time. the legs are heavy and angry and even undisciplined- awkward- in gait. strange. . . . so the runs are strained and ugly and fish-flopping funky.

work and work—new paintings by darren mulvenna and jay edge (c'est moi). opening on thursday, september 25th, with the premiere fourth friday reception following on September 26th. . . . here are some sneak-peaks (of my recent work), landscape-nudes, inverted dopplegangers, et cetera. . . .  the doppelgangers have continued for several years now, as have the landscape-nudes, and their visual vocabulary is fresh and reinvigorated: i am truly excited about them!   flesh soil paint.  three prominent elements of my creative cycle. we shall see what darren has up his talented sleeve.