PROFESSOR OF PAINTING AND DRAWING
Stephanie McMahon has recently exhibited at Tang Contemporary (Beijing), T + H Gallery , Gravity Gallery, SCOPE New York, Memorial Art Gallery, Chautauqua Institution and The Painting Center. Her work was also featured in a public ArtBridge project, Intersections, at Barclays Center. McMahon is recipient of the Memorial Art Gallery Award of Excellence and has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. She has participated in artist residencies at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, ME. Her work has been reviewed and published in the Boston Globe, Blouin Artinfo, Hyperallergic, New American Paintings Blog, New American Paintings Magazine, Cantanker Magazine, Exploring Studio Materials by Mary Hafeli, and Syracuse University’s literary and visual arts journal, Stone Canoe. McMahon has lectured as a visiting artist at numerous universities including Kent State University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Northern Illinois University, Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, China and Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. McMahon holds a BFA from the School of Art and Design at Alfred University and MFA in Painting from The University of Texas at Austin.
My paintings extract and distill my observations and perceptions of a particular environment while presenting the possibilities of visual experience and abstraction. Weaving in and out of referential forms and colors, I allow for intuitive and contradictory responses that fluctuate between deliberate and incidental. Initial explorations can shift abruptly as the painting develops, challenging one’s sense of time and resolve. The result is both tangible and fleeting as unexpected and precarious relationships emerge between thin, translucent layers. Gestural brushstrokes impart physicality yet glide weightlessly over smooth surfaces as figure ground relationships oscillate and conflate. Fluid marks are often contained within a shape or stopped by a sharp edge in contrast to the gesture, revealing both transitory and measured time. My process is both calculated and open, creating an active space for visual exploration that connects to the present moment while reconstructing a past experience.
Links to further information, reviews, exhibitions, etc:
Blouin Artinfo Everlasting at Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing
Artsy Featured Exhibition on Artsy
Review on New American Paintings
Hyperallergic Review of Grey Matter at The Painting Center
Curbed NY, Intersections at Barclays Center, Artbridge
nc artblog, review of Geometric Constructs
PAINTING MFA Alfred/Düsseldorf 
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