Art Talk

It is the second week in the new series on local artists, What are You Working on Now?, and I got to converse with Rebecca McGavock who just graduated from Mississippi University for Women in Columbus this past weekend with her BFA. It was great to be able to talk with her in this busy time and find out what she is working on currently.
Rebecca has shown work in the Valley before during a studio crawl and in Bozarts this past winter when her scratch art portraits were featured in the show, The Good Bad and the Ugly. Her range of talents and work always impresses me, and I was amazed at what she is focusing on now.            
Her current work involves using an opaque projector and images of 20th century paintings that she superimposes over people’s faces. The process is fascinating and involves her taking photos of the person while he/she is in front of the projected image of the painting. She then fine tunes this image with the projector again and then paints from the final photo. She says her focus is really on studying color, and she loves how the color red looks as it passes over the form of the face.
These oil paintings are done with palette knife on linoleum tile. She has done about six of these paintings and is now adapting her technique to do studies of sunsets. She uses a 35 mm camera to capture the sunsets and then uses those projections to create those studies.
Though this work is not currently on exhibit in the Valley, she does have some bird paintings that she created in gouache for the Holiday Miniature Show hanging on the walls at Bozarts Gallery. She enjoys working in this medium and loves birds, so she really enjoyed creating these works for this show. Stop by at 403 Main Street to check them out and be prepared to see more work from this young and very talented artist.