October 2015: Anna Magruder, Tara Murino-Brault & Kate Saunders
" Mythed Flight" is a collaboration between oil painter Anna Magruder and printmaker Tara Murino-Brault – two women who have a mutual infatuation with wings. They’ve reimagined mythological females such as Medusa, sirens and succubae. Working together to create this show led them to play off each other’s interpretations of myths and symbols, think more conceptually and hold themselves to a higher standard.
Anna Magruder’s favorite painting subjects are animals, people, and hybrids of the two. Drifting between realism and surrealism, her inspirations include history and old photos, especially of faces. "If there's not a face in the painting, I'm probably not going to enjoy painting it that much,” she says. In 2009, after 14 years as a graphic designer, she decided to devote herself fulltime to oil painting and illustration. Since then she’s been a featured artist on the Emmy-Award winning series Oregon Art Beat, received an RACC grant for her “Oregon’s Painted History” series and just finished a three-month residency at the Helen Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico.
Tara Murino-Brault has taught at Portland Community College for 10 years, regularly working across disciplines by teaching printmaking, basic design and drawing. Chicago-born, she holds a BFA in graphic design from the University of Illinois and an MFA in printmaking and book arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Tara’s printmaking explores symbolism, mortality, rebirth and cultural power and powerlessness. “I enjoy playing with opposing elements such as light and dark, reason and folly, or good and evil, and the interdependence of each to define the other,” she says. She’s participated in Portland Open Studios, mentored candidates for the emerging printmaking residency for Print Arts Northwest and is an active member of the Southern Graphic Council. Tara’s shown her work at Imogen Gallery, Print Arts Northwest, Oregon State University and Bite Printmaking Studio, where she curates shows and assists with general operations
Kate Saunders is a glass artist who is exploring mixed media & glass through house imagery. Her title for this group of little houses is “Dream Houses”.Kate uses these little houses as a metaphor for a place that shelters, that contains our memories and our emotions. Some of the houses have come directly from her dreams, a subconscious source of creativity and inspiration. “It is my hope that my work excites the viewer’s interest and imagination, that they use their own personal archetypes to understand their own desires and needs, to open up to their subconscious.” The materials she used include kiln formed glass, Fimo, wire, bamboo wool, razors, twigs, found objects. “I love the way glass can look both rigid and fluid, bulging and flat. There’s a natural tension in its surface that appeals to my sense of time and space, of imagination, of strength caught at the breaking point.”