Against the Grain

Against the Grain is a two artist show featuring Mitch McGee and Adam Young. As well as fine artists, both McGee and Young are woodworkers by trade, and each brings a unique sense of materiality and craftsmanship to their artistic practice.

Heavily influenced by the aesthetics of the early Pop Art movement, McGee creates bold, graphic relief paintings from meticulously hand-cut and layered birch wood. With eye-catching palettes and familiar visual tropes, McGee's striking mixed media works draw the viewer into gently nuanced conversations about socially constructed gender roles and stereotypes.

Carrying on a very different aesthetic tradition, Adam Young paints richly detailed worlds on Douglas Fir panels from his wood shop, imbuing them with the symbolic language and storytelling practices of American Folk Art. Constructed from drawings and writings recorded in one of his ever-present black notebooks, his visually dense paintings on wood explore spirituality, personal mythology, and our collective interconnectedness with nature.