Bay Area artist Robin McDonnell opens an exhibition of new work at Brian Gross Fine Art on Thursday, January 7, with a reception for the artist from 5:30-7:30pm. The series on view, Affect / Effect, expresses her increasing interest in the gestural energy the artist imposes on the canvas, and the “complex and unforeseeable results” of that exchange.

In recent works, Robin McDonnell continues her exploration of movement and change through active, expressive paintings. Deftly balancing the spontaneity of chance with calculated responses, McDonnell applies layers of sweeping brushstrokes in complex hues to create bold, dramatic surfaces. Earth tones are interspersed with glints of silver, quickly moving between thick, opaque and sheer, translucent layers of color. The energetic, sometimes turbulent, compositions are evocative of dynamic forces of nature.

McDonnell is one of the featured artists in Trans: Form/Color, an exhibition showcasing abstract painting by nine international artists, on view at Meridian Gallery, a San Francisco non-profit art space, through December 19. In Kenneth Baker’s November 28 review of the exhibition in the San Francisco Chronicle, he writes “McDonnell… appears to want to lay open the suggestiveness — the hints of light, space, scale and depiction — that seem instinctive in her materials at this stage in their history.…[her work] registers the activity of someone trying to forget as she goes, less to sustain spontaneity than to outrun second thoughts.”

Robin McDonnell was born in New York City in 1955. She received her B.A. from San Francisco State University in 1982, a B.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1994, and an M.F.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996. Her work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions throughout the Bay Area, and she has been an instructor at Mills College, in the Department of Art, since 1999. This is McDonnell's third solo show with Brian Gross Fine Art.