Folding In
Body and Cloth has been my subject for many years. Either cloth is in concert with the body or cloth takes on its own dance of transformation. In this ongoing series I am painting people I know, who are my age or older. I mean to capture something of the significance and distinction that has been gained by lasting through uncertainties and vulnerabilities within the influences of life and death. They are each posed in an awkward position, as aging is awkward, but they still manage some grace and force of character. The bodies and cloth are meant to perform similar conditions metaphorically as they knot and loosen in emotional tying up and releasing. I use cloth as background because it is a human construction and as the folds turn in on themselves, they take unique, never to happen again forms, mimicking how each person’s composite traits and qualities are distinctly their own.
A Boulder, Colorado native, Irene Delka McCray earned her BFA from Colorado State University and her MFA degree from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is currently Professor Emeritus at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, and also taught for seven years at Santa Fe Community College and three years at Santa Fe International Academy of Art.
McCray’s paintings and drawings of the figure have been exhibited widely, primarily in Colorado, New Mexico, and California. Her work is in the Denver Art Museum’s Permanent Collection. Other exhibition venues include the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, CO, the Center for Visual Arts, CO, Boulder Center for the Visual Arts, Co, Pacific Grove Art Center, CA, Oakland Center for the Arts, CA, Kansas City Arts Coalition, MO, and the Museum of New Mexico, NM. She is a former member of Pirate, a Contemporary Art Oasis, CO, and is currently represented by Sandra Phillips Gallery, CO.
During her time in New Mexico McCray studied in earnest Archetypal Dream Work with Ann Yeomans, whose treatment of psychic imagery continues to impact her work. McCray’s paintings and drawings arrive out of the soul realm of human experience. The episodes occurring, often between body and cloth, are meant to depict a deepness of spirit and grace, stirred with unease.