ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a record keeper. I track the passage of time, the migration of birds, the decline of native species, and the blooming of spring ephemerals. Painting is how I document and adore the specific natural spaces I inhabit. Adopting a schematic approach allows me to see closely and experience intimately while keeping my romantic tendency and solistalgic grief at bay.
Currently I am documenting the 625 species listed as Endangered, Threatened or Special Concern in Connecticut. I research each species and paint a symbolic representation; each taxonomic classification has a different method of representation. Plant species are represented by painted watercolor strips, while amphibians are represented by small paintings suspended in liquid-filled specimen jars. Learning the names of forgotten species is my way to honor and make visible the beauty, diversity and wonder that is unseen and at risk.
As a child I routinely visited the plants around my yard and in the forest. Nowadays I make visits to the Nature Preserve near my home to find the skunk cabbage as it pushes up through melting ice, the unfolding May Apples and unfurling Ferns, the new pink Maple leaves. The spring ephemerals excite me the most until the meadows are filled with Joe-Pye Weed, Ironweed, and Pods of Milkweed.
Born from my walks to the New Canaan Nature Center, recent rules-based projects represent my intense desire to deeply connect with the natural world. The impossibility of an unmediated experience of nature, and my passionate need to have one, compels me to spend time enmeshed here, noticing, observing, and absorbing. The resulting work is my attempt to translate my lived experience, and an acknowledgement of the impossibility to completely share the ineffable, almost sacred experience of nature.
BIO
Cynthia MacCollum/Bio
cynthiamaccollum.com
Cynthia MacCollum is a painter, printmaker, and photographer who lives and works in New Canaan, CT. Her work has been shown at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY; the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT; Elisa Contemporary Art, NY; First Street Gallery in New York; The Kellogg Gallery at Cal Poly Pomona, Blue Print Gallery in Dallas, Panopticon Gallery in Boston, and internationally in Cadaques, Spain, the UK, France and Hong Kong. In 2013 Cynthia’s work was selected by curator Donald Kuspit, one of 32 pieces out of thousands of submissions, to be part of the First Street Gallery National Juried Exhibit in New York City.
As a child, MacCollum spent countless hours out of doors, often near the creek in the ravine behind her home. This early connection to nature instilled a reverence for the natural world that pervades all of her work. MacCollum’s daily habit of walking through the nature preserve near her home has informed and inspired much of her work over the last several years.
MacCollum is a member of New Canaan’s Silvermine Guild, the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, and Odetta Digital. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis with a major in Art History and a minor in Fine Art, she has continued her studies at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, and through monthly critiques with the CritLab. Artist Residencies for three summers, at the Skopelos Foundation for the Arts in Skopelos, Greece, have deepened MacCollum’s interest in the intersection of nature and art, and of painting, printmaking, and alternative processes. In addition to private collections, her work can be found in the Fine Art Collection of the Montefiore Health System and Memorial Sloane Kettering.
Cynthia MacCollum
cindymaccollum@gmail.com
Solo and Group Exhibits
2025 Blue Print Gallery, Dallas, Texas
2024 It was Evening all Afternoon, MAPSpace, Port Chester, NY
2024 Crit Ecologies: Artist, Community, Criticality, Hudson Valley MOCA, Peeskill, NY
2024 When Darkness and Light are Blue and White, Pearl Conrad Gallery, Ohio State University, Mansfield, OH
2024 Postcards to Venice, Odetta, Venice, Italy
2021 Thirteen Moons, solo exhibit, Carriage Barn Arts Center, New Canaan, CT
2021 Flowers and Flyers, Elisa Contemporary Art, Riverdale, NY 2020 Affordable Art Fair, Elisa Contemporary Art, NY, NY
2019 Shades of Blue, Panopticon Gallery, Boston, MA
2019 Affordable Art Fair, Elisa Contemporary Art, NY, NY
2019 Spring Prologue, 2 Person exhibit, ArtWORKS Gallery, Norwalk, CT
2018 Live Auction, Monothon, Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT
2017 Artists Showcase, Group Show, Avenue Gallery, Norwalk, CT; Invitational
2016 Flora & Fauna, Nest Arts Factory, Bridgeport, CT; Invitational
2016 Spring Fling, Group Show, Avenue Gallery, Norwalk, CT; Invitational
2015 ART On The Line, Invitational International Art Show and Exhibit, The Space, Hong Kong
2015 ART SHOW: BEDFORD, Benefit, Bedford, NY; Invitational
2015 Full Bloom: The Artist’s View of Gilded Age Botanicals; Lockwood Matthews Mansion Museum, Norwalk, CT
2014 New Members Exhibition, Silvermine Guild Arts Center, New Canaan, CT
2014 Continuum, Solo Show, H. Pelham Curtis Gallery, New Canaan, CT
2014 On and Off the Wall, First Street Gallery, New York, NY; Invitational
2014 Spring Fling, Group Show, The Avenue Gallery, Norwalk, CT;Invitational
2014 Works on Paper, The Road Gallery, New York, NY; Invitational
2012 Panorama, Members Show, Center for Contemporary Printmaking,Norwalk, CT
Juried Exhibitions
2023 A Complexity of Joys, MAPSpace, Port Chester, NY
2023 Spectrum, Carriage Barn Arts Center, New Canaan, CT
2022 Exquisite Codes, Odetta, Aqua, Miami, Miami, FL
2022 Intimacies, MAPspace, Port Chester, NY
2022 Serious Play; Odetta Digital, Artsy.net
2021 Spinning Plates; Odetta Digital, Artsy.net
2021 Page-Turner: Odetta Digital, Artsy.net
2021 Flow; Odetta Digital, Artsy.net
2021 Art Essex; George Billis Gallery, Westport, CT
2020 International Biennial Footprint Exhibit, Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT
2019 The Edge Effect, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; Akili Tommasino, Juror
2019 Site: Brooklyn, Works on Paper, Brooklyn, NY
2019 Spectrum, Works on Paper, New Canaan, CT
2018 Silvermine Guild Juried Member Exhibit, Susan Ely, Juror
2018 Spectrum, Carraige Barn Arts Center, New Canaan, CT
2016 New Work/New Directions, Juried Members Exhibit, Silvermine Galleries, New Canaan, CT
2015 Annual Mini Print International, Cadaques, Spain and Bages, France
2015 Spectrum, Carriage Barn Arts Center, New Canaan, CT
2014 International Biennial Footprint Exhibit, Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT
2013 In the Layers, Juried Members Exhibit, Silvermine Guild Galleries, New Canaan, CT
2013 Ink and Clay 39, Kellogg Gallery, California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA; juried show
2013 National Juried Exhibition, First Street Gallery, New York, NY, Donald Kuspit,
Residencies
2018, 2017 and 2016 Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, Skopelos, Greece
2023 Nocefresca, Sardinia, Italy
Collections
The Burke Rehabilitation Hospital, White Plains, NY
The Fine Art Collection at Montefiore Einstein, Bronx, NY
Memorial Sloan Kettering, Long Island
Affiliations
Odetta Digital, Artsy.net
Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT
Silvermine Galleries, New Canaan, CT
Elisa Contemporary Art, Riverdale, NY
Blue Print Gallery, Dallas, TX