McLennon Pen Co. is pleased to present Trace of Being, our first solo exhibition with Katherine Boxall, a Canadian-born artist based in Austin, Texas. Bringing together a dozen large-scale and a few smaller-scale abstract paintings, the exhibition offers a focused yet expansive view of Boxall’s materially driven practice—one that insists on painting as both an event and a residue, a site where gesture, surface, and time converge. Working with acrylic, spray paint, pastel, oil, household paint, and clear gesso, Boxall constructs compositions that are at once immediate and considered.

For Trace of Being, Boxall presents four interrelated bodies of work. One group explores the blunt utility and chromatic flatness of household paint, foregrounding its resistance to traditional painterly hierarchy. Another centers on her signature use of clear gesso, often overlaid with white spray paint, a process that both veils and activates the surface, allowing earlier gestures to flicker through like afterimages. A third body incorporates a scar or relief—physical interruptions in the picture plane that function as records of pressure, removal, or insistence. The final group integrates drawing directly into the painted field, collapsing distinctions between line and mass, planning and improvisation. In several works, Boxall introduces red spray paint, a chromatic intrusion that heightens tension and amplifies the bodily charge of the compositions.

Boxall’s work is in dialogue with key figures in postwar and contemporary abstraction. Like Jules Olitski, she treats paint as an atmospheric force, capable of dispersal and saturation rather than containment. Her engagement with spray paint recalls Katharina Grosse’s radical expansion of painting into space and environment, while her attention to gravity, flow, and the performative release of paint resonates with Pat Steir’s investigations into chance and control. Yet Boxall’s paintings remain distinctly her own—less about spectacle or transcendence than about persistence, touch, and the cumulative trace of decision-making.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Katherine Boxall (b. 1993, Ottawa, Canada) is an Austin, Texas–based artist. She received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2018 and her BFA from Queen’s University, with an international exchange at the University of New South Wales Art & Design in Sydney. Boxall has presented solo exhibitions at Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, and has participated in group exhibitions at institutions and galleries including The Mint Museum Uptown, Hollis Taggart, Berggruen Gallery, and the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been featured at art fairs such as Art Miami and Art on Paper New York, and includes commissioned installations for Fontainebleau Las Vegas and Adidas. Boxall is a recipient of grants from the North Carolina Arts Council and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation.

Link to full press release.

Katherine Boxall

Trace of BeingJanuary 9 - February 15, 2025

Trace of Being

January 9 - February 15, 2025