Monet created some thirty paintings of Rouen Cathedral between 1892 and 1893. He rented a space across the street to act as a temporary studio so that he might study the changing light and character of the building throughout his study. Later he chose twenty of the best to exhibit.

In a similar manner, Katherine Sandoz has chosen a subject that is found on the site of her permanent studio: magnolia grandiflora. This native inhabits the artist’s property as well as that of the adjoining sites in her neighborhood of Vernonburg, Georgia.

Over the past year and a half, Sandoz has studied the magnolia, its leaves and fragrant blooms over the seasons, in changing light, weather and temperatures. While painting both indoors and out, from life and from photographs, she has reflected on it sculptural qualities, its ever shifting palette and on the alternating translucence and opacity of the individual petals. With many layered passages and criss-crossing of complementary colors, the canvas records some of these observations and hints at depth of this slow-growing and large evergreen.

Sandoz pays homage to the plant so cherished in the southeast as well as to the history of painters’ endeavors and to the history of painting. Her survey of the plant celebrates its unique beauty as she explores the physical qualities of pigments, paint and water. With these two pursuits in mind, the MAGNOLIA series offers fourteen different portraits of this ancient genus.

Carlyle Wolfe’s paintings & works on paper are about an awareness of the natural world—becoming progressively, cyclically more present to its rhythms, gaining deeper understanding of its design, & acquiring direct experiential knowledge of its mysterious beauty.

For the last 15 years, Wolfe has been making contour line drawings of plants form observation. From her drawings, she isolates silhouettes into paper stencils which she uses to create oil paintings & works on paper – or cut out of metal to make sculptures. Her work is cumulative in nature – gradually marking time & seasonal change, unity & variety, individual & collective beauty.

Wolfe grew up in Canton, Mississippi, & earned a BFA in painting from the University of Mississippi & an MFA in painting & drawing from Louisiana State University. She has also studied in Cortona, Italy, & at the University of Georgia. Wolfe has exhibited work throughout the South, including the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, David Lusk Gallery in Memphis & in Nashville, the Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center, the University of Charleston, the Shaw Center for the Arts, the Mississippi Museum of Art, the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, the University of Mississippi Museum, & Arkansas Arts Center. Her work was recently selected for the Art in Embassies Program at the US Embassy in Maputo, Mozambique. Wolfe is the recipient of three Mississippi Arts Commission Visual Arts Fellowships (2005, 2010, 2015) & two Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Visual Arts Awards (2008, 2017). She lives in Oxford, works in her studio beside her home, & until recently taught part time at the University of Mississippi.

David Boyd is a plein air artist who paints the Southeast’s urban and rural landscapes. His paintings are often a nostalgic nod to his childhood memories of growing up in rural Georgia and the passing of time. A native of Newnan, Georgia, Boyd received a BFA in Illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design. He has participated in and won awards at plein air events around the southeast and has been a part of multiple juried and solo exhibitions.