The Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present two new captivating solo exhibitions from artists Sean Healy and Shane McAdams. Opening October 5, both shows will run through October 28, 2023.
In an intimate new collection of work, Sean Healy’s show Lifer continues the artist’s internal battle between ego and self-doubt. Populated primarily by a series of graphite drawings, the pieces in this show are a lifeline back to the artist’s first love of drawing.
The obsessive mark making in many of these works on paper along with the personal subject matter bring a new level of clarity to Healy’s work. Stripping away pretense, this stylistic shift reflects a change in the artist’s thought process, creating a more personal level of expression. This beautifully raw collection of work includes subject matter such as portraits of his newly found birth father (Zeus) or of his aging Mother (Godmother). In his skillfully emotive portraits of animals, Healy comments on consumerism, politics and the self, choosing to capture his first self portrait in Self Portrait as Dionysus, a depiction of himself as a chimpanzee. Perhaps one of his most personal works is sculptural, Baby’s Teeth displays a collection of his wife’s baby and wisdom teeth in a clinically straight line from 6” standoffs. The resulting work creates a tension between sexuality and codependency that ultimately serves to make the viewer uncomfortably aware of piercing a couples’ personal bubble. With this show Healy reminds us with sharp intensity of the pitfalls and triumphs of one life and our shared humanity.
In addition to exhibitions at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Healy has exhibited at the Betty Moody Gallery (Houston, TX), Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass, CO), East/West Project, Dam, Stuhltrager/Gallery Homeland (Berlin, Germany) and The Art Gym (Marylhurst, OR). He has received several important public commissions, including the Wayne L. Morse Courthouse (Eugene, OR), Pioneer Place (Portland, OR), the General Services Administration Headquarters (Eugene, OR) and the FBI Headquarters (Houston, TX). The Elizabeth Leach Gallery has represented Healy since 1999, and in 2006 published a comprehensive catalogue on his work featuring an essay by Stephanie Snyder, director and curator of the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery at Reed College (Portland, OR).
Also on view is Shane McAdams’ show The Teckivy Nazdack. These new dreamlike landscapes from McAdams are driven by an exploration of space, atmosphere and color. His work pushes the boundaries of what a landscape entails, carefully exploring perspective and sense of place.
With innovative technique and skill, McAdams handles a range of materials from oil paints and acrylic to glue and enamel. His landscapes pull viewers into a strange new world, one almost familiar and yet oozing with strange distortion, creating a desire to look closer, lean in a little further. As technology and AI continues to tighten its grip on the art world, McAdams strives to create work with a dimensionality and nuance only achieved in the grit of reality. His show title The Teckivy Nazdack gives nod to the common phrase “the tech heavy nasdaq'' which NPR uses as they report stock market results at the end of the day. Such a phrase is one example of how media representation and constant repetition begins to flatten meaning and reaction. The presence that these visceral paintings exude is accomplished through explorations of texture, atmosphere and spatial relationships, creating work which begs to be examined closely and with the naked eyes of our physical world.
Shane McAdams’ artworks masterfully combine divergent styles to create scenes where illusionistic space intersects with sublime landscapes. McAdams received his MFA from the Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY) in 2004, and his work has been exhibited at the Marlborough Gallery (New York, NY), Pace Wildenstein Gallery (New York, NY) and Caren Golden Fine Art (New York, NY). He has been a regular contributor to The Brooklyn Rail since 2003.
