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Arts & Entertainment

McAvoy Shows Her Dark Side

Local artist displays works in the Patchogue Theatre's lobby.

Local artist Jessica McAvoy was featured in a closing reception last night for her work that has been on display in the Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts.

McAvoy's exhibition, titled "Fowl Follies: Works of Goya" comprised of seven works inspired by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. Her gallery was sponsored by the Patchogue Arts Council.  

Goya was a significant influence for McAvoy, who began studying his works seven years ago.  Her interest in his work led her to the El Prado Museum in Spain on numerous occasions, where she took time out to learn more about what exactly inspired his works and why they moved her.

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"Every time I would look at them, I was studying to try to find what was the emotional connection I was feeling with the paintings, why did they touch me so deeply," McAvoy said.

McAvoy said that the paintings hold strong, dark emotions as they were painted near the end of his life when he was partially blind and deaf. 

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"They were such a raw emotion from inside of him, and he painted them without the expectation of anyone ever seeing them or ever experiencing them, so they really were his inner feelings, inner emotions," McAvoy said.

McAvoy was so inspired by his works that she decided to take her own distinct approach to creating similar drawings using rooster forms that she worked with on a few occasions. Each of the seven drawings were based loosely on a sample of Goya's black and white compositions, incorporating the rooster form.

"I just loved the idea of imposing the rooster forms in these works and seeing how they resonated," McAvoy said. "There's like an absurdity to those forms and such a darkness to his work, so it's such a great juxtaposition to play with." 

McAvoy is currently working on four additional large-scale drawings in the series. The complete series will be shown at the gallery at Briarcliffe College in Bethpage in the spring of 2011. She is one of the founding members of the Patchogue Arts Council, co-chairing this year's Walking Arts Tour and participating in multiple committees within the organization. 

 "What I find striking too is that there's delineation. There's a focal point which would be the rooster, but yet she captures movement, compositionally, the rooster in relation to the other roosters," said Deborah Peck, a volunteer with the Patchogue Arts Council and a founding member. 

"She picks up on Goya's atmosphere extremely well and translates it really well with her use of roosters," said Arts Council member Beth Giacummo. "She has this dark sense of humor so it makes it a little funny, it takes that work and kind of gives it that contemporary spin," said Giacummo.

McAvoy graduated with a B.F.A. in Drawing and Painting from the Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia

"Fowl Follies: Works of Goya" will be up in the Patchogue Theater until June 30.

For more information about Jessica McAvoy, please visit her website at www.jessicamcavoy.com.

The Patchogue Arts Council has held a number of events recently at the Blue Point Brewery.

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