Jeane Kat McGrail is a contemporary artist, avid environmentalist, and animal rights activist. Her work is constructed in the convergence of documentary photographs and surreal graphic twists, where she uses the digital tools of cameras, computers, and printers. Enlightened with the serenity and creativity found in nature, she gets her inspiration from the environment, which she is active in conserving. As a pioneer in contemporary digital art, she is an avid environmentalist and animal rights activist. As an author and artist/photographer, she believes what better way than photography to stimulate the majestic striving of the soul for nature? Jeane is a former resident of Wisconsin. Her many return trips to photograph the region express her reminiscences of the St. Croix River, her childhood playground.
McGrail exhibits individual artworks in series that are part of an environmentally-related project, The River Project: Origins, Movement, Confluence. Each series (Convergence Series, Reflections Series, and Artic Vortex Series) reflects the others.
Referring to The River Project: Origins, Movement, Confluence, McGrail says: “just as the river moves, so the inquiry changes—unveiling the past, and directing the future.”
On the surface, her Reflections Series appears to be reflections on water in spring, summer, fall, and the edges of winter. The view from across the water, is reminiscent of the inaccessible island Horaijima (Island of Everlasting Happiness) in Japanese culture. Delving more deeply, viewers discover reflections within reflections. In a surreal manner, we discover what is real, what appears real, and what is reflective of reality.
One departure from her previous Reflections landscapes is Oblivious: Sunday Stroll by South Pond: here the artist manipulates the scene—literally transmogrifying the environment. The addition of speculative/metaphysical / fantasy elements (such as carp and jewels) is a metaphor for the global collective dread, a caveat to those who stroll and explore in oblivious innocence.
In the Arctic Vortex Series: Interruption, Suspension, Transformation, McGrail constructs work (based on the Artic Vortex weather phenomenon) showing severe effects of global warming of the earth’s water supply, including the Great Lakes as part of an urban environment—blasting the Midwest, while making parts of the Great Lakes dense with ice and sculptural formations, often clandestine and surreptitious. The terrain transcendently changes when bitter gusts fabricate wilderness (and few individuals venture to enjoy) along the banks of Lake Michigan.
The familiar associations are suspended in a timeless sense of place, as the distant buildings protrude the infinity of horizons into biting air, swirling clouds, and blue atmosphere. The entire body of work relates to, reflects on, and sometimes solemnly anticipates coming events. McGrail’s journey takes her seasonally into nature—experiencing the climate, the bears and bugs—where she documents, explores, and reflects.
McGrail’s printmaking process mirrors her observations in nature, and is reflective of the natural and social changes she observes; during her printmaking, constructive, and assemblage process, she further transforms as future possibilities unfold. The viewer then adds another layer of reflection, and the meaning of the artwork continues to stream—which the artist envisions as seasonally renewing, healing, and hopeful.
McGrail has shown her art nationally and internationally, including The Charlotte Printmaker’s Society Exhibition; Chautauqua Center for the Visual Arts, Chautauqua, New York; LACDA, Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts; Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts, LLC, NYC; Chuck Levitan Gallery, New York City; Norman R. Eppink Art Gallery, Emporia, Kansas; Edward Hooper House Art Center, Nyack, New York; Galeria L’Etang d’Art, Bages, Francia; Metropolitan Museum and Art Center, Miami, Florida: National Museum for Women in The Arts, Washington, D.C.; Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida; Adogi Taller Galleria Fort, Cadaques, Girona, Spain; Ukranian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago, IL; Wing¿eld Arts & Music Festival, Wing¿eld, England; and the Brand Library, Los Angeles, CA. Her biography can be found in Who’s Who of American Art and Who’s Who in America. She currently lives near Chicago with her husband and animals.