09/16/2026
Carrie Clayden Fine Artist Carrie Clayden’s Unfolding and Gathering Light are two acrylic paintings featured in Review: UCSC Arts Alumni, which closes this Saturday, September 19. Across both paintings, which the artist created for the exhibition, layers of warm and earthy colors, abstract shapes, and shifting forms offer glimpses of what could resemble a landscape. In Unfolding, a light background meets a thin reddish strip stretching horizontally across the painting, followed by layers of orange, green, brown, purple, and blue that fill in the middle ground and foreground. What starts to emerge for you within these layers? Do the colors and shapes bring to mind a coastline, water, land, or something entirely different?
In Gathering Light, many of these colors return, but their scale and arrangement begin to shift. Larger shapes occupy the foreground, while lavender, brown, green, and reddish tones move across and around one another. Where do your eyes travel as these colors and shapes overlap? These two paintings are part of a series where Carrie Clayden was exploring abstracting the California coastline using the same palette with different styles. Looking at Unfolding and Gathering Light together, notice what carries from one painting into the next and what begins to change. As you spend more time looking, what do you notice, and what feelings do these paintings leave with you?
Review: UCSC Arts Alumni Exhibition
📆 August 13 – September 19, 2026
⏰ Thursday-Saturday 1-5pm
