To Embrace the Whole Sky with the Mind

Attempting to balance all the fury and fearsome beauty the natural (and not so natural) world extols on our planet is the pith of Karen Marston’s work of the past several years. The undeniable influence of climate change informs her fascination with the acceleration of crises and catastrophes we now seem to experience on a regular basis.

This exhibition takes it’s title from “Totum animo comprendere caelum”, the inscription on the exterior of the National Weather Center at the University of Oklahoma, a global nerve center for all things regarding severe weather and meterological patterns. “To Embrace The Whole Sky With The Mind”, the poetic motto of those scientists, captures the artist’s desire to paint the magnitude of the sky.

This series of smaller plein air paintings are the culmination of a residency last summer in rural Pennsylvania, the landscape and expansive skies there placed in time by Marston’s deft hand and assured eye, blending the rapturous environment with her intellectual curiosity into an immediate space of awe and wonder.

With the larger canvasses here, the study of bucolic splendor broadens to a darker exploration of a brooding foreboding, and then manifestation of violence and destruction, a commentary made all the more palpable by Marston’s conviction and engagement with her themes. The startling discovery that amidst the organic grace of our world, these ever more common occurrences of disaster also can provide a sense of disturbing beauty.

Attempting to balance all the fury and fearsome beauty the natural (and not so natural) world extols on our planet is the pith of Karen Marston’s work of the past several years. The undeniable influence of climate change informs her fascination with the acceleration of crises and catastrophes we now seem to experience on a regular basis.