Other Worlds: Trees, Flowers and Birds relates Claire McConaughy’s unique painting style to the natural world. McConaughy’s paintings present heightened, dreamlike images of nature that are rooted in reality yet transformed through subconscious perception and the act of painting itself. Her source material is the vivid, radiant energy of the natural world, whose vitality she seeks to channel and convey. She combines close observation with experiences from her own life — regeneration, chance, death, humor, and vulnerability — while acknowledging that her perception is filtered through the lens of being an artist in the woods.
McConaughy’s process begins with direct encounters with nature: exploring forests, woods, and rural landscapes, as well as observing trees, flowers, and weeds in New York City, where she has lived for more than thirty years. She carries these experiences into her studio, where they are reimagined through exaggerated color and expressive mark-making. Through this transformation, representations of nature evolve into vibrant paintings.
The reverence for nature found in 19th-century American landscape painting, along with the concept of “interior vision” practiced by the French Symbolism movement, serve as important precursors to her work. Like those artists, McConaughy not only observes the external world but also translates the relationship between inner experience and outward creation.
