Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present Magical Thinking, a solo exhibition featuring new works by Regina Scully. Scully’s paintings in Magical Thinking explore the imaginary heroic landscape and the many microcosmic worlds it encompasses. The artist uses rhythmic brushwork and both subtle and powerful color to abstract and filter images in her mind she recalls from pictures, experiences, memories, and meditative journeys. Equally inspiring to her work are the landscapes where she has lived and traveled, and the faraway islands and magical forests she researches online in photographs. The labyrinthine spaces in her paintings become vistas and stages for poetic vignettes, intriguing characters, suggestions of objects, and an exploration of paint itself.
Of her new series of paintings in the Magical Thinking exhibition, Scully states, “these paintings are still mindscapes but they are explorations of the magical realm of the mindscape, the ‘never-never land’ and ‘the land of make-believe. A place of secret forests lit by fireflies and filled with fairies and magical creatures. A place which in part, hearkens back to our childhood--during that period of time when we fully existed inside a world of magical thinking. These paintings invite the viewer to re-visit this land-- where you can wish upon a star and your dream will come true.”
The late well-known art critic in New Orleans, D. Eric Bookhardt wrote about Scully’s “flair for fusing arcane metaphysics and modern abstraction in ethereal paintings,” and stated, “It is unusual to encounter a body of work that touches on the extremes of existence, from the macro to the micro, from the cosmos to the human form, all coexisting together.”
New Orleans-based artist, Regina Scully has exhibited nationally and internationally and has had solo exhibitions in New York, New Orleans and a solo exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art. She received her BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in Painting from University of New Orleans. One of her paintings was acquired in 2021, for the lobby at World Trade Center, Tower 7 in New York where it is permanently installed. She is also a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant. Among other collections, two of Scully’s paintings are in the Microsoft Art Collection and two works are in the permanent collection at the New Orleans Museum of Art.