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CARMEN CHANCELLOR
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Valentine: 36X36, Oil on Canvas. Copyright 2005 CARMEN CHANCELLOR.
A graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, Carmen Chancellor is best known for her Pop-surrealist narrative paintings. Combining images of popular culture and religious iconography, she explores issues of femininity, spirituality and empowerment with a wit and sincerity that is both disarming and intimate. Visages of the Virgin Mary, Malibu Barbie, Evel Knievel, Pokemon and other unlikely cultural icons populate surrealist landscapes as Chancellor employs Da Vinci-esque pastiches to render a world that is at once hauntingly familiar and surprisingly original. In a review published in Art Papers, Erik D. Bookhardt, of The Gambit, describes her work as "a visually engaging assortment of castaway objects reborn in a carnival of gaudy divination. At first colorful and buoyant, it turns sometimes dark and then essentially mystical as we sense something serious below. Yet unlike political art we sense no particular "enemy," but something more complex. So this show reflects the dreams of a woman, an artist whose sense of life and love -- of being, loss, and becoming -- is universal. And immanent -- the power of manifesting that flows from within." Carmen has exhibited her work in Baltimore and New Orleans and now resides in Los Angeles, where she works from her Wonder Woman Studio.
CARMEN CHANCELLOR GALLERY
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