Cynthia Innis

Artist Statement:

The work continues to be an investigation of forms under transformation. Exposing a transitional pivot—a moment of exchange as one thing becomes another. The surging biomorphic instances suggest a physical and botanical reference amidst an environment also caught in flux. Growth stages in plant and animal forms interest me--considering the seasons in my environment, I examine the wet/dry, sexual/reproductive, stiff/limp/buoyant, fresh/spent, thriving and fragile properties of the body and nature through abstraction. Time and movement are explored through a narrative created with drawing, paint and collage.

The materials include the use of satin, velvet and vinyl fabrics layered with ink and acrylic paint on canvas, wood panel and paper with a strong emphasis on line.

Cynthia Ona Innis is a visual artist, currently living and working in Berkeley, California. Innis received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley and a MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.  Her mixed media paintings are included in the permanent collections of the San Jose Museum of Art, the collection of the US State Department Art in Embassies, the Berkeley Art Museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.  Her work has been exhibited at the Southern Exposure Gallery, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Zimmerli Art Museum and the New Jersey State Museum.  Among awards she has received are two James D. Phelan Awards, one for printmaking and another for painting, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and residency and a Kala Fellowship and residency. Innis has been a visiting art professor at the San Francisco Art Institute, the University of California at Berkeley, San Francisco State University and the Maine College of Art. With representation in Los Angeles at the Walter Maciel Gallery, Innis exhibits throughout the United States as well as internationally.  Innis recently completed a summer residency at La Porte Peinte Centre for the Arts in Noyers sur Serein, France and is currenlty in the Affiliate Studio Program at Headlands Center for the Arts.