Caitlin Carney: i would find you in any lifetime

Lowell Ryan Projects is pleased to present Caitlin Carney’s first solo exhibition titled i would find you in any lifetime. Exploring the boundaries between representation and perception, this series of minimalist, color field paintings depict Carney’s study of the sky particularly at sunrise and sunset from her studio in Morongo Valley, CA. Informed by a ritualistic practice of observation, Carney’s works capture temporal movements of both light and emotion, longing and contentment. 

Having recently relocated her studio from Los Angeles to the Mojave Desert, the vastness of the sky and seasonal rhythms of the land have become a central focus of observation. With each painting Carney engages with a particular time of day—observing the white vapor her breath produces against the cold desert air as the first orange slivers of sunshine pierce the night sky or witnessing the light shifting to soft shades of blue as the sun sets behind the horizon line, her feet still feeling the warmth from the parched desert floor. A color palette emerges as a reflection of both the recorded visual image and the physicality of the experience. Carney pours swaths of color directly onto canvas in her outdoor studio—warm golds linger near pastel blues as they shift into pools of lavender and darken into deep magentas and Prussian blues. Each painting, cradled behind blond wood stretcher bars, is then wrapped in a translucent polymer scrim, producing a palpable sense of transience.

The works in i would find you in any lifetime blur the line between the tangible and the ephemeral. Viewing these works from different angles and depths produces shifts in perception of color as well as changes in focus. While each piece marks a particular time and experience they are illusive in grasp, evoking a sensation of sentiment while avoiding the immutable. This series, created in homage to a loved one, captures a visual archive of the light during a particular period in Carney’s life, serving as both a documentation of the world around her and the emotion contained in that space.