McSween’s paintings transcend ordinary perspectives. She works from realism, taking an image and deconstructing the composition into sweeping curves of color, unexpected angles, and smooth planes. Painting and scraping through layers of color to find pathways, she leads viewers through her paintings to spaces infused with light and joy. That light— just beyond the horizon, spilling into a field, or captured for a split second along an edge, is McSween’s signature. Her style combines delicately blended brushwork with bold intuitive palette knife marks and drawn lines, making her paintings lively and familiar.
Influenced by the underwater abstracts of Bob Mazur, her painting professor at Bowling Green State University, McSween draws inspiration for her own work from the places she’s lived, from her childhood home in Northeast Ohio to her current home in Charleston, South Carolina. An explorer of the National Parks and outdoor spaces, she brings the serenity and power of nature into her paintings.
