For Immediate Release:

Traffic: Paintings by Cynthia Guild
February 28 through March 31
Opening Reception:
March 7, 3:30-5:30 p.m.

"Traffic" presents an exhibition of works by Wilbraham, Massachusetts's painter and printmaker Cynthia Guild. This series of paintings began with Guild's encounter with the "Traffic Cams" (highway camera) images provided on the Connecticut Department of Transportation's website (www.ct.gov/dot). The D.O.T. and WTNH, Channel 8 News' aerial mounted cameras, provide real time video still images of Connecticut highways I-91, I-84, I-95, and RT-2. These pixilated, birds eye perspective photographic source images have functioned as the primary pictorial influence and conceptual subject matter for Guild's "Traffic" series.

Guild's paintings transform these washed out readymade video still images into expressive, color stained explorations of the sublime. Guild describes her selection of images as a spontaneous process of chance. "I am happy to be 'out of the driver seat' as it were and to come to these as an outsider, not composing or framing shots, but simply culling the ones I like in any given day or night that I happen to take a look - the play of randomness and choice of the photos themselves continues as it is filtered through my aesthetic sensibilities and agenda as an artist."

Guild's painterly emphasis on light and atmosphere evokes sensations of a surreal, big brother dreamscape within the plausibility of the here and now. Each image offers a momentary glimpse into this exploratory realm of the ordinary, yet applies the subjective grandeur of traditional landscape painting. Guild's "Traffic" series monumentalizes the tide like flow of highway activity as a universal experience of contemporary life mirrored within the intimate world of the canvas.

The Pegasus Gallery is located on the first floor of Chapman Hall.

Hours: Monday & Wednesday – 5pm - 8pm and Saturday – 9:30am- 1:30pm

Contact:
Matthew Weber
Art Curator
860.343.5806
or MWeber@mxcc.commnet.edu for more information