About - Carianne Mack

Artist StatementEarly in my painting career while drawing outside, shadows from a tree above me cast themselves onto a page in my sketchbook.  Tracing one of the forms onto my paper started an investigation of the relationship between unpredictable, natural occurrences with deliberate ones:  unplanned forms from the natural world with intentional marks of my hand.  Since this initial collaboration, I have been building images based on dynamic structures formed beyond my control or conscious decision, such as accidental paint spills, water reflections, and most recently, random scatterings of natural detritus.

I choose the subjects I work from for the environment of chaos they can provide on my canvas. Like a simulated wilderness, this unruly setting becomes a place to explore–one that I do not fully know like I would if every mark was intentionally placed. I bump into uncharted moments on my canvas much like one would stumble upon an uncommon insect in a jungle. My conscious work into this surface discovers while I work to make sense of and arrange.

The sophisticated order of frost on a windowpane, the ripples in a happenstance mound of laundry, a tangle of fallen tree branches; my brushstrokes intermingle with intricate and untamed accidents through coexistence, camouflage, and mimicry. I believe that the core of my work is the meaning and metaphors that arise through process.

Biography

Carianne Mack was born in Coldspring, NY and grew up in the woods of Northwestern Connecticut. She received a B.F.A. in painting and sculpture from Alfred University in 1998 and an M.F.A. in painting and drawing from The University of Iowa in 2002. She also studied at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy.

Exhibitions include Lo River Arts Gallery in Beacon, NY; Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, CA; A.I.R. Gallery in NYC; Wendy Cooper Gallery in Madison, WI; the INOVA center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; ArtLab space at the University of Memphis Museum of Art, Memphis, TN. Mack has taught at The University of Iowa, The University of Northern Iowa and The University of Connecticut, as well as other institutions. She is currently teaching at Tunxis Community College in Farmington, CT.