Taryn McMahon

Human impact on ecologies and Western conceptualizations of nature have been the primary concerns of my artwork for nearly ten years. My recent artworks explore dislocated and hyperreal landscapes that conflate reality with simulation, such as botanical gardens. I am particularly interested in the ways that art - from landscape painting to botanical engravings - has fueled and shaped fantasies of nature that pose it as something “other.” The spaces I draw and photograph reveal complex interactions between the human and non-human. The drawings and photographs made on site are then manipulated and filtered through digital and handmade printmaking processes to generate mixed media works on paper and installations. As viewers walk around the installations, they shift from pictorial image to sculptural object; their constructed-ness is revealed. My works in both installation and two-dimension move between real and artificial, landscape and construction.

Taryn McMahon grew up in NJ and received her BFA from The Pennsylvania State University. She attended the University of Iowa, where she received an MA and MFA in Printmaking. McMahon has received numerous awards for her work including a Knight Arts Challenge, Puffin Foundation Grant, and Denbo Fellowship. Her work has been shown at venues such as The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA; the International Print Center, New York, NY; Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Whitdel Arts, Detroit, MI; and Artist Image Resource, Pittsburgh, PA. She currently serves as an Associate Professor of Studio Art at Kent State University