Cynthia Knapp

"Queach" - nature-based abstract painting - lyrical - colorful - red

2024

This painting is a mixed media abstract work on canvas featuring hues of orange, green, blue and yellow. Evan is inspired by the works of Frank Bowling, Helen Frankenthaler, Candid...

This work on canvas is a mixed media abstract work featuring hues of blue, orange, and green. Framed in a natural wood floater frame measuring 20 by 16 inches. Evan is inspired by the works of Frank Bowling, Helen Frankenthaler, Candida Alvarez and Dorothy Hood. Atlanta-based artist, Evan Blackwell Helgeson’s recent body of work “I Know The Place,” is rooted in the exploration & abstraction of nature, combining the representational with the metaphorical & intangible experience of varied landscapes. Her mark-making aims to express the complex compounded layering of experience as we process varying circumstances, emotions & memories while in nature. “I Know The Place” explores the dichotomy & simultaneity of the cycles of nature & lived experience: as new things bloom, something is decaying; as new terrain is explored, a yearning for home grows. Travel in recent years to the Pacific Northwest & Hawaii have deeply influenced Evan’s work, & have come to intertwine with the layered marks & known gestures that express her own home. It has provided a unique contrast to these known environments & subsequent mark making, drawing unique parallels to the way we compile experiences that create our complex perspectives; interweaving memory & possibility to create new paths forward. "Traveling from the dense layers of the treeline where horizons are hidden, a desire to find a path out begins to grow," says Evan. "Similarly, the wide expanse & monolithic scale of the coastline displays the fullness of the horizon & the dizzying implication of new possibilities & the unknown. One does not negate the other, but rather they inform each other, recalling the cycle of being drawn out into new terrain, & receding deep into the comfort of home. An ebb & flow that creates dynamic balance." Evan Blackwell Helgeson is an Atlanta-based artist who works in painting, drawing, installation & ceramics. She received a BFA from the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd...