Claire Mcconaughy: Uncultivated
EXHIBITION DATES: March 3 – March 28, 2026
RECEPTION: Thursday, March 5, 5 - 8 pm
closing RECEPTION: saturday, March 28, 4 - 6 pm
The Painting Center is pleased to present Uncultivated, a solo exhibition of oil paintings by artist Claire McConaughy. The exhibition opens on Tuesday, March 3, and runs through Saturday, March 28, 2026. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, March 5, from 5 to 8 pm.
The exhibition Uncultivated relates the wild, uncultivated nature of painting to an environment left to its own without human intervention. These ten paintings present heightened, dreamlike images of nature rooted in reality, yet transformed through subconscious perception and the physical act of painting. McConaughy’s source is the vivid, radiant energy of the natural world, a vitality she seeks to both channel and convey.
McConaughy’s process begins with direct encounters in nature—exploring forests, woods, and rural areas, as well as observing the trees, flowers, and weeds of New York City, where she has lived for thirty years. She carries these experiences into her studio, where they are reimagined through exaggerated color and expressive mark-making. Through this transformation, representations of nature evolve into vibrant paintings that confront the viewer.
Her work finds its precursors in the reverence for nature found in 19th-century American landscape painting, as well as the "interior vision" practiced by the French Symbolists. Like them, McConaughy does not merely observe the external world; she translates the relationship between inner experience and outward creation.
Claire McConaughy lives and works in Brooklyn and upstate New York. She has exhibited nationally at venues including Nick Ryan Gallery, The Drawing Center, 490 Atlantic, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Zürcher Gallery, Red Fox Contemporary Art, and Garvey-Simon West. She is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and residencies at Millay Arts, Ucross Foundation, and the Santa Fe Art Institute. Her work has been reviewed in Art Spiel, Artcritical, Whitehot Magazine, Hamptons Art Hub, and other publications. For over a decade, she served on the editorial board and staff of the art journal New Observations. She has taught at several New York City art colleges and is a full professor at Bergen Community College. Originally from southwestern Pennsylvania, McConaughy earned an MFA in Painting from Columbia University and a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University.
For more information on the artist, visit: www.clairemcconaughy.com and @clairemc431.
