In the works, creatures in carefully applied oil mixed with marble dust and wax creep out from seemingly nowhere across thin layers of oil paint.

Despite the thick totality of the haze, with time Capanna makes out multiple distinct elements. Sailboat, Parasol, Fishing Line, Swan and Wildflowers, Chair both exude an eerie Turner-esque mist, a sight that Capanna witnesses daily in the course of painting while living in a cabin on Wesserunsett Lake at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, ME, during her 2021 summer teaching fresco painting. Mariel Capanna, Sailboat, Parasol, Fishing Line, Swan, 2021 By forgoing a reliance on individual perception for multidimensional experience, pivoting painting towards temporality, and inverting composition, Capanna offers mesmeric viewing experiences. Much like Bishop’s quiet interactions with a fish and probing speculations concerning the depth of perception, artist Mariel Capanna’s recent paintings configure basal shifts, both painted and interior. Bishop’s observations, rendered without flash or flourish, disclose the apparent distinction between subjectivity and objectivity, while simultaneously evading the primacy of the binary. Instead, they move, catching the spontaneity of light through perspectival shift. They do not return her stare and in them, she does not see her own reflection. They are far from glowing and orb-like but nevertheless, they dimly glimmer in their puckers and divots.

Poet Elizabeth Bishop describes the intimate and strange act of looking into the eyes of a fish, observing the size, color, and texture. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky.

“The sea was indistinguishable from the sky”: Observational Paintings by Mariel Capanna by Laurel V.

In Her Shadow by August McLaughlin