BIDDEFORD —”Plugging Up The Cloud,” a new work on paper is one of the highlights of the Biddeford+Saco ArtWalk and at Engine on Main Street in Biddeford.

Created by Portland artist and art educator Kelly McConnell, the exhibit will be on display through Aug. 25.

“My paintings are about time, a systematic record of time, and representations of my life through an allegorical selection of colors.  For example, red to me stands for plasma or life. My paintings are realistic in their expression in that they are about me,” McConnell said. “Rather than a narrative, I have painted a a set of emotional symbols and a collection of paths and journeys. Reflected in the paint, I see through fog, sheets of water, or a veil, depicted with multiple layers of color. These layers are how I experience my life. The accumulation of marks become the painting.  The painting is a physical artifact of an experience, one woven with the past, the event of the painting, and the future of the object I created.”

She said her work reflects her perception of what she sees currently in our society.

“What is happening in our nation, and my disgust with our current government officials,  are at odds with the serene systems I have been embracing in my studio. I have found I am less able to compartmentalize the world around me to make sense of it,” McConnell said. “Recently, hands, heads, and other figurative elements have emerged in my mark making, and I have let them stay. I have teased these images off the canvas surface and rearranged them in the environment. In this life, when we now all work and try to make meaning, these paintings, then, also represent my own disequilibrium as an artist in this time.”

McConnell is the Director of Art Education Outreach, Associate Professor at Maine College of Art and has lived and worked in the Portland area since 1995.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Gettysburg College, a masters of fine arts degree from Maryland Institute, College of Art, a PK-12 Art Education certificate, as well as a certificate in Advanced Educational Leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Her recent solo exhibits have been at Three Fish Gallery and Mayo Street Arts in Portland.

“Plugging up the Cloud” at Engine in Biddeford will be followed by another solo exhibit at Frank Brockman Gallery in Brunswick in November 2019.