Peony by Charlotte Fraser
The Miller Gallery ‘s first major exhibition of 2022 will feature two Charleston artists, Charlotte Fraser and Jenan McClain. Here’s what the artists had to say about the exhibit, called Delicacy in Strength:
“Our body of work centers on the delicacy and strength found maternally in nature. The irreversible growth in movement and change produces both inevitable beauty and undeniable power. Delicacy in Strength outlines the feminine spirits guiding our existence and experience. A return to self channeled through change; the contrast between fragility and resilience. Expressed in florals, figures, birds, and waterscapes, each piece represents the wisdom found in nature, contrasting images of glory and grief, darkness and light. The divine source captured in the magic of the maternal form.”
Charlotte Fraser is a Lowcountry native, born and raised in Hilton Head. With creative parents who fostered a love of the arts and the natural world around us, Charlotte has been making art since childhood. After graduating from Clemson with her bachelors and Harvard with her masters, she spent many years as an art teacher, cultivating the skills and passions of her students from Arkansas, to DC, to Charleston. Now, as a full-time mother and artist, she works in her home studio in Charleston, SC. Her strong draw to macro photography has inspired her paintings of singular strong subject. This intentional way of painting gives full respect and appreciation to every aspect of that subject. Charlotte is a representational artist, working in acrylic, gouache, watercolor, and charcoal.
Jenan McClain's love for painting flourished following a transformative event five years ago, enabling her to access an intuitive approach beneath her brush. Attending the Fine Arts Center in Greenville, SC through high school, and under the mentorship of talent Jim Campbell, she first experienced the beautiful beginnings of meditative creation. Much of her textured, expressionistic work centers around the maternal in nature: marshes as mothers of the sea, flowers as the divine feminine, and figurative abstractions- whimsical pillars of strength and wisdom.
In addition to being a full-time artist, Jenan is a published poet. For this special exhibition she composed a complimentary piece titled “Delicacy in Strength”:
I'm beginning to love the sound of my own footsteps. The silence in my skin, the ground softening. Self blame, rejection, denial and perfection eroding under new steps. Ones leaving wiser prints. My soul embracing the whispers in solitude. It is here I indulge in great magic and unconditional kindness, the overwhelming inspiration of source in self.
I'm beginning to love the sound of my own footsteps. On occasion my shadow accompanies and we walk together with ease and acceptance, bravery and strength. Alone and together, darkness and light.
For more information about the exhibition, click here.
