Chris Carraher will be having an exhibition of her paintings at the Art Queen Gallery in Joshua Tree, California, from September 16th through November 26th. That’s starting one week from today!

Her exhibition is titled love full of life and can be viewed from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends and by appointment.

The seductive pastel paintings of love full of life were begun in 2003 and come out of an admission of love, the love of a working-class dandy for a queerfemme. Innocent and knowing, erotic and tender, cocky and sweet – Carraher/Jackadandy makes the subject matter her own. Unexpected visions render surprising and new the mystery, joy, passion, and pain that are common to all romantic love. From a genderqueer perspective she summons the dynamics of feminine and masculine but without the constraints of heterosexuality or the angry limitations of “male vs. female.” In these intimate altars to love, she invites the viewer to both step beyond the binary and celebrate the erotic of difference.

Using an unusual technique of working pastels with a brush on sandpaper, Carraher achieves a unique, velvety surface that can be matte or sparkling, dense or transparent, bringing depth to a resolutely shallow pictorial space. She combines fields of exciting color with a distinctive vocabulary of lyrical line and abstract figuration. Occasional text and incisive titles expand the dimensionality of compositions that are friendly and deceptively simple.

Visit jackadandy.net for more information.

You can find Maria on MySpace here. Pick up Queer Shorts, her new anthology, at MergePress.com.