Connie Connally: UnderStories

Connie Connally’s botanical abstractions reference the wild, sensuous forms and colors she is surrounded by in the natural coastal landscapes of Southern California where she lives and works.

In this new series, Connally focuses on the natural history of perennial woodland and prairie wildflowers; showing their ephemeral loveliness each spring before the woodland trees cast shade. Though modest in nature, the wildflowers are persistent and tenacious - sprouting their colorful blooms in patches across meadows and in the bosque forest habitats.  Connally celebrates this persistence to thrive and captures their simple beauty.

Thomas Nozkowski, the prominent NY, American abstract painter, said of Connally's works when he was her art advisor at SMU, "her 'nature abstractions' make the modest into something ambitious and it is her commitment to honor the continuous variability of her experience in nature. Each painting arises from that original experience and she keeps the painting open so anything can happen, while staying true to the original experience."

Connally’s paintings capture a complex elegance that merges the natural references with her powerful abstraction. The painted surfaces have a life of their own - the layers of brushwork distill the essence of her observations and display the vital interplay between memory and imagination.  These paintings reflect both her exterior and interior experience of her surroundings. The rich, multi-layered surfaces of color morph, coalesce and scatter in quietly energetic rhythms that evoke the experience of being surrounded by nature.
Connie Connally received her BFA from Wichita State University (Magna cum Laude) in 1973 and her MFA from Southern Methodist University, Texas.  Connally has exhibited throughout the United States and her work has appeared in numerous publications as well as public and private collections.  She was a university professor of art between 1988 and 2005 and currently lives and works Santa Barbara, CA.