An early painting by Karen McClanahan

"Blue Vie" is one of the smaller paintings from Karen McClanahan's first solo exhibition with our gallery in 2002. We discovered her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2001 where she was featured in a group show of RMCAD students (at a time when they used to do this sort of thing, and in all honesty it was my wife Karen who first got excited about McClanahan's work) . It was an exciting time for us, we knew that we wanted some fresh talent from Denver to work with at the gallery and the MCA show afforded a great opportunity to really size some of the student work up. McClanahan proved to be a very good choice on our part as we've had a continuous relationship since, her major works on canvas being completely sold out to date with a waiting list for new works. She has proven herself to be an extraordinary talent of depth and great understanding, and a pleasure to work with. While the exhibition that "Blue Vie" was featured in would be considered the first succesful show for our young gallery (at the time) it really would be a credible blockbuster at any point in this artist's career and is a fascinating sidenote to the dynamics of the art business. This particular painting was also the invitation piece for the show and still I think one of Karen's most unique works to date. It is on the small end of her general scale but powerful in terms of her dynamic use of color and her ability to use shapes in an abstract yet imaginative way. What also makes this piece somewhat of an anomaly for her work to date is that the center shape has a gloss finish that contrasts the blue massing of the rest of the piece. I've never asked Karen about this but feel that it is likely unique to all of her work and something that she may have experimented with just on this piece. The line play where diverging colors border is truly exquisite too and something that resonates more over time while living with the piece (as is the case with all of her works and good artwork in general). This piece is also a testament to buying artwork from local artists at a gallery such as Plus, since her prices have at least tripled if not quadrupled since that time and are highly in demand. Since she's really only now at the start of her career (barely 8 years into it) only time will tell what the ultimate value of the work may hold. We have one other major painting of hers in our collection that I'll comment on soon, and a few minor gems that may one-day show up here as well. The amazing thing about McClanahan's career is that everything she has produced to date has really been credible and consistent, even though she has recently honed her focus and changed some of the concepts that define her work.