January 7th, 2018

By Veronica Vale, Fine Art Consultant

Maura Allen and Nina Tichava rejoice in the ways that their artistic styles run parallel to one another. Both artists utilize elements of the earth and landscape, of geometry and structure, as inspiration, using painting and printmaking techniques, patience, and careful craft to create the dazzlingly intricate layers of their work.

Through Maura Allen’s body of work, she celebrates both the land and the dreamer. In each piece, she reverses the view, using iconic silhouettes overlaid on top of serigraph (screen-printing) layers to provide a window into the West — a place of land, gold, adventure, and possibility, where dreams and desires have room to soar. With a nod to both tradition and land, she names each piece after a Western town, most real, but some fictional, brought into our imagination through film, song, and literature.

Nina Tichava’s paintings are collections of moments from daily life: combined glimpses, thoughts, memories, and objects. She aims to describe not only what things look like, but also how they might feel. Her paintings are composed of complex layers and the application of thousands of beads of paint, painstakingly and individually painted with brush and used to create screens and patterns. She describes her work as “abstract painting with botanical and architectural references,” as the pieces suggest natural forms, man-made structures, and patterning both natural and designed.

Please join Gallery MAR in welcoming both featured artists for an artist reception for their exhibition “Parallel” on Friday, January 19th at 6pm. Both artists will be in attendance.