Works On View: Susan Murie and Mishael Coggeshall-Burr

Mishael Coggeshall-Burrintegrates the art of photography and oil painting to create novel and compelling images on canvas. Taking blurred shots with a 35mm camera, the artist searches for peripheral scenes with cinematic color and tone. He translates selected images into abstract-realist paintings with convincing color, formal structure, and subtle references to art history. Through his actions Mishael questions both the truth of photography and the fiction of painting: we enter a liquid, cinematic space, capturing the magic moment when Alice seems to step through the looking glass. The photorealistic image melts away, the prosaic merges with poetry.

Susan Murie worked for many years as a gardener in both formal public spaces and private settings and this exposure and interaction with nature at an intimate level has informed her artwork, primarily with cyanotypes. Murie's current work is inspired by home and belonging, flowers and the overgrown landscape. Due to the unpredictable nature of the process, each print has its own outcome, depending on the elements of that process - sunlight, time of year, wind and paper properties. This uncertainty becomes a part of the piece. Her pieces are one of a kind, made by hand in the studio, on a variety of light sensitized fine art papers.