Maria Calandra

Steve Turner is pleased to present Walking in the Wild, a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Brooklyn-based Maria Calandra that are inspired by her frequent excursions into nature. According to Calandra:

"Walking in the wild plays a major role in my artistic life. I have always been mesmerized by the repeating lines and colors in reflected water, ancient rocks and twisted tree trunks and roots. Channeling a stream of consciousness, I pull from both the real and imagined while using a form of automatic painting to guide me. I try to make connections between that which I observed and that which I remember. I aim to liberate my thoughts and experiences from any boundaries of the rational. Photos taken while hiking are used as a visual springboard, but the work quickly departs from there to the memory of a place and the feeling I had while in it. Some of these memories date back to my youth. As I always begin painting a particular place while listening to the same music that I listened to when I was there, undulating sounds and vibrations also influence my brush strokes. The paintings are dense with detail and I strive to make them as alive and wild as the lands that inspired them."

Maria Calandra (born 1976, London) earned a BFA from Ohio University (1999) and an MFA from Cornell University (2006). She is the artist and writer behind Pencil in the Studio, an online project for which she visits an artist for one day to capture their studio and artwork in a drawing. She has exhibited her work at Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York; Shrine Gallery, New York; Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York and Fourteen30, Portland. This is her first solo exhibition at Steve Turner.