Jeanne McMahan

American b. 1948, Bangor, ME, based in South Strafford, VT

About Jeanne McMahan

Artist’s Statement

Observation of Memory

Landscape in these works is the product of both memory and observation in the moment.  

The location in Maine that I find myself drawn to paint in one I have known and loved since childhood and that I visit and observed again often.  

The landscape in Vermont is what I see every day that I am at home and observe it’s quotidian and seasonal changes. 

It is this everyday sameness and moment-to-moment change that I strive to capture in both these settings, not in their detail or pictorial accuracy but in the mood and sensory pleasures of color, shaped, and light translated by the gesture of the brush and the quality of paint itself. 

The paintings presented here are the results of these explorations in time season, weather and light and thus are seen in series that may call to mind Morandi’s still lifes, Monet’s Rouen Cathedral or haystack series, or more recently the series paintings of Eric Aho or Joseph Salerno.

Biography

Jeanne McMahan currently works in oils, using the landscapes of her native Maine and current location of Vermont as subjects to present her particular vision of gestures, colors, patterns and textures.  McMahan, with a background in art therapy and master studies in fine arts and painting, worked in mixed media during her early career in New York City.  After relocating to Vermont, McMahan continues to focus on painting the landscape in oils.