Clyde Connell-Notations C

Clyde Connell

This exhibition will bring together works completed in the last years of Clyde Connell’s life together with earlier paintings and sculptures already held in private collections. The artist created her work in a remote idyllic setting on Lake Bistineau south of Shreveport. Clyde Connell incorporated into her paintings and sculpture a variety of indigenous materials from the Louisiana landscape. Her abstract sculptures were regularly made of cypress wood, clay and farm related pieces of metal. Her sculptures are evocative of ritualistic totems and primitive votive objects. In her paintings Clyde Connell frequently employed primitive markings and pictographs which are associated with talismanic shapes. Clyde’s mystical connection with the spirit of the people who at one time occupied the Northern Louisiana land area where she lived for her entire life is apparent. The ancient art and culture from the settings where she lived mysteriously penetrate her quite contemporary work.