Opening reception: Saturday, April 6, 6 – 8 pm
during Jammin’ on Julia with music by The Bad Andy & Myron Scott Duo

Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present In the Moment, a four-person exhibition featuring the works of Luke Forsyth, Carmen McNall, Wayne Pate, and Greta Van Campen. In the Moment highlights a selection of still lifes, landscapes, and interiors; a collection of paintings depicting singular moments in time. Utilizing vivid colors and patterns, each artist’s work conveys a story of both the ordinary and significant aspects of daily life.


Luke Forsyth is a painter and illustrator living and working in Los Angeles, California. Known for a playful approach, Forsyth enjoys working in an array of colors and mediums. He draws inspiration from the everyday, with subjects ranging from domestic interiors and expansive sweeping landscapes. Forsyth’s newest series of paintings draws from his background in theater to examine the parallels between visual and performing art. Focusing on art and theater institutions as sites of physical activity framed by systems of display, he distills elements from each discipline to expose performance in life and life in performance. Forsyth’s paintings are both stage and tableaux; using stagecraft as physical framing devices, flowers and vessels as performers, texture and color as dialogue and blocking. The works are simultaneously playful, alive, still, and focused - like crystallized set pieces from surrealist plays. Forsyth earned his BFA from Humboldt State University in 2005. His work is included in notable public and private collections including The Cedars-Sinai Collection and the Fidelity Investment Art Collection.


Using a unique process that combines painting and wood-carving, Oakland, Californa based artist Carmen McNall’s work balances intricate patterns and textured mark making bound by organic shapes against stretches of pure pigment. Her practice relates directly to the handmade in both subject matter and execution, opening a dialogue on the relationship between people, their environments, and what inherently fastens us to our surroundings, examining the empowering qualities these places retain. The faceless figures in McNall’s work resemble Goddess like muses as they rest in dynamic yet effortless poses. Each one embodies strength, confidence, and wisdom alike. The figures are adorned with a novel blend of symbolic patterns and mark making. They rest within their own elements, surrounded by a complex yet tranquil interior landscape that inhabit both ancient and futuristic realms. They act as anonymous guardians of transcendent, yet familiar moments in time. Through this work, McNall explores the body as a vessel, a container that carries us through life, using both literal vessels such as vases and containers, as well as human forms. She investigates all that is held within our worldly form: memories, tension, energy, healing properties, intuition and how all these aspects manifest into movement. McNall has participated in solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally and has been awarded artist residencies with both Google and Facebook. Her large-scale murals and art installations are included in the collections of The Four Seasons, the California Medical Association, and Google Headquarters.


Based in New Zealand, Wayne Pate’s work focuses on rendering objects and interiors in his signature simplistic and sophisticated style. With bold subject matter and fresh color palettes, Pate often uses pieces of canvas or linen to collage and create layers beneath the paint. In his travels, Pate has amassed a collection of historical objects, which include lebrillos, jugs and water pitchers from Spain, ceramics and terra-cotta pieces from Italy and Greece as well as various vessels from Provence, which often recur throughout the work as repeating shapes. Through subtle shifts in size, format, and contrast, these repeating shapes emerge from the subconscious, giving voice where there is none. Wayne Pate was raised in Texas and moved to New York in the early 1990’s where he established his career. Pate’s work is included in many notable private collections, such as The Carlyle Hotel, New York and the Palm Heights Hotel, Cayman Islands.


Greta Van Campen is an artist based in Thomaston, Maine and is known for a hard-edged graphic approach to representation. She has spent a great deal of time traveling across the United States sourcing inspiration from the landscapes, small towns, and cities throughout America. She starts each painting working from her own photographs and sketches, first deciding on large compositional elements and dynamic lines, then painting in layers and masking off areas and adding smaller details as she continues. This distilled and stylized approach imbues her traditional subject matter with a freshness and modernity. Van Campen has had solo exhibitions at On Center Gallery, Provincetown, MA; Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, ME, and Firecat Projects, Chicago, IL, among others.