Trena McNabb: Acrylic

I began painting in my mid-twenties by creating unusual imagery allowing the warm unpainted canvas to show through white paint. Gradually adding color to that, the images became transparent and overlapping one another. The overall effect is a unique montage of color and images. I have parlayed that technique into a successful career, creating site-specific paintings for corporate offices, government agencies, hospitals, banks and other architectural interiors. These works range from 32-foot long multi-canvas, site-specific corporate or public art commissions to elegant pieces for private residences. My work can be found in China, Japan, Germany, across the US and numerous locales closer to home.

Reading is and has always been my favorite pastime. It therefore is natural that story telling would be closely analogous to my work. Each painting is actually a connected series of images that tell a story…

I grew up in a small town in North Carolina with a passion for reading and art. As long as I can remember I loved to draw - as I grew up I became aware that it was possible to make a living as an artist. I began using my artistic talents to earn a living as an award-winning commercial art director.

Most of my paintings utilize a technique I developed allowing the warm raw canvas to show through white paint. The image is first drawn in pencil on #10 cotton canvas and sprayed with fixative. I then paint up to and around the figure with white gesso. When that has completely dried, I paint a clear matte varnish over the figure to protect the canvas and drawing. When that has dried, I paint another layer of white gesso. This serves to "gesso" an image into the priming of the canvas and readies it to receive the colored images.

I work from memory or photographs I have taken, books and reference materials, clippings from magazines and drawings from my enormous "morgue" reference file. I have been collecting images for about 40 years and continue to add to this collection of articles and information for use in my work. The images are a combination of landscape and elements of nature. When I am layering the images, I break up the horizontal images with vertical images and fill in the entire canvas with other likenesses from nature.

The dimensionality of the work is achieved in many ways: sectional pieces wrap around a corner; or suspend from the ceiling on swivels; unexpected materials such as extra canvas, Plexiglass, twine, or sawdust are often sewn or adhered to the canvas. Different textures, such as matte and gloss, can also be found on a single painting. These techniques combined with the repeated applications of the white on natural canvas create something I can be proud of.

My work has been referred to as a multi-layered, transparent montage of images, each with its own allegory. I want these compositions of thematically related scenes to be a blend of realism and imagination. I want viewers to look beyond the obvious and think.