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Naza McFarren

As a young child Naza McFarren busied herself sketching. With coal in hand, McFarren used the sidewalks of her Brazilian neighborhood as a canvas. When in school, listening to the instructor and drawing within textbooks, divided McFarren's attention. After receiving paint and brushes as a gift from her sister, McFarren's appetite for artistic expression became insatiable. 

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Beginning a career as a professional artist "from scratch,"1 McFarren likens her artistic education to home-schooling. While not formally trained in painting, having a voracious reading appetite, McFarren consumed as many books and magazines as possible to learn various techniques. In addition to reading, she talked with other artists and inquired about their techniques to accomplish certain painterly effects. Though determined to engage with other artists and books to master technical abilities, McFarren needed to create an individual artistic language. To that end, she never perused the art of others in galleries or museums, nor in magazines or books. Not wanting any outside influences on her work; McFarren chose to look inward and relied upon artistic intuition. Only when comfortable and secure with a personal "style and philosophy" of painting, did she begin seeking out the art of others.

The artist paints living, active bodies, whether human figures or animals, imbued with human characteristics. Not simply painting a figure, McFarren's work encapsulates the active, lived history of the subject. Artistic elements are in constant inter-play, crating a free-floating whimsical fantasy, grabbing the viewer's attention and engaging the imagination. Through colour, the artist instills both caution and compassion on the part of the viewer by the varied ways in which she represents the eyes of wildlife subjects. McFarren appreciates the importance of individuals being emotionally, physically and environmentally tied to the world. As such, through the juxtaposition of image, the contrasts of light and dark and broad sweeping brush strokes, her paintings embody the experiences of all living creatures.2

While her work represents global influences, local surroundings also provide inspiration. Respect of nature and life, as well as global and local subjectivities, is represented in the paintings of endangered species. The artist's paintings exude emotions resulting from her embodied connection with life and the activities of living. Whether pleasurable or terribly uncomfortable, McFarren's works enter the viewer's being; not just grabbing one's attention mentally, but attacking the consciousness, creating a longing and a long imprint.

[[right sidebar]]"Of chief concern here is the 'aesthetic' nature of everyday life; the common graces and embodied values."
-Robert R. Desjarlais[//right sidebar]]

PARSISH GALLERY | 1991 to 2005   27