Show Dates: May 4th-31st

Artist Reception: Sat. May 14th, 5-7pm

“I watch the Seadrift Lagoon from my dining room windows. I look at the ocean while walking on the beach. I notice the rain from my studio windows. These sights and childhood memories of the Potomac River have been the inspiration for many paintings and two books of poems. I’ve created paintings of light on the lagoon, oil spills, rainfall and waterfalls, and objects inspired by water. During the recent drought I thought of these artworks as my rain magic. I hope my meditations on water will quench your thirst for more color in your life.

Though I was taught easel painting, I always preferred to paint on a flat surface so that I could have more control of the paint’s movement. I prefer wet media to dry. When painting on a vertical surface, the drips once bothered me. Every few years I made a painting where I allowed the drips to fall, until January of 2013 when it rained and rained. I loved the sound, the colors and the falling of raindrops. I spent two months painting a large diptych, “Concord.” From then on I was painting falling water. A smaller piece inspired a commissioned diptych from a collector.  The repetition of the lines with different colors, the transparency to different layers and directing the fall of paint were new challenges. While the earlier water paintings were concerned with light on the surface of the water and horizontal movement, the new falling water paintings are atmospheric impressions of the life-giving rain and the force of gravity.”

That I should be painting water again

Always the flow

Of mist

Fog

The falling rain

Light on the water

I float on the river of art

Claudia Chapline, 2016

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Gallery Statement and Artist Biography

Claudia Chapline has been a political and artistic staple in the Bay Area since her “Diary of Discard” series in the 1960’s. A self described art journalist and poet, Chapline’s poetry and language often finds its way into her two-dimensional art, as it has for her exhibit at Abrams Claghorn Showroom. Her exhibit, aptly titled, Water Works, focuses on her intense connection to water, the ocean and her continued belief in recycling and conserving natural resources.

Over her long career, her work has been shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Crocker Museum, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the War Memorial Museum in Seoul, the Florence Biennale, and many galleries throughout the USA and in Japan, Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, and Guatemala. In 2006, the Northern California Chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art recognized Chapline with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Chapline has founded and directed galleries for new California art since 1974 in Santa Monica, Sacramento and in Stinson Beach (since 1987). She has curated numerous exhibitions for her own galleries and for non-profit organizations. Due to her efforts over the past three decades, hundreds of artists have shown their work throughout California and also in Europe.