Please join us as we welcome the talented artist, Tess Darling. 
There will be light refreshments and 20% of the profits or art sold during the opening and while is up at the clinic for the next three months will be donated to the Veterans Healing Farm in Hendersonville, NC 

ADVANCE FREE TICKETS ARE REQUIRED FOR THIS EVENT - SEE BUTTON BELOW

Tess Darling 
Wildlife Sketches

Tess Darling's creative pastime developed into a career when she attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville from 2008-2013. She sacrificed an 11-year competitive tennis vocation to pursue her Bachelor in Fine Arts, acquiring the Tucker S. Cooke Scholarship for Studio Drawing and a Minor in Psychology as well. With a psychological mindset, Tess focused on figurative work, creating portraits and nudes that emphasized isolation, which continues to be a recurring theme throughout her career. 

While attending the university, Tess became a River Arts District Artist for WhiteSPACE Gallery where she sold pieces from her series Mud. Each painting was full of color and movement, as the nude figures blended in to their environment, representing the mesh of personae that blend into our virtual world. 

In 2015, Tess took a road trip around the American Southwest. The unique landscape inspired a series of acrylic paintings entitled Awe, which were showcased at the Grovewood Gallery. Her paintings depicted locations in Pisgah National Forest and the French Broad River, each piece painted with colorful, gestural movement and pockets of tight detail. 

Her current series Fauna portrays wildlife inspired by her road trip, as well as animals from Western North Carolina. She retains an abstract modality, creating sketch-like paintings. The subjects are painted with a certain realism, but with quick and efficient proportions to give them a study aesthetic.

Tess continues to work on her drawings and paintings in Asheville, NC. Her most recent wildlife paintings and drawings are on display at the Mark Bettis Studio and Gallery, located in the River Arts District. She's a member of the River Arts Distrtict Artists and of a local, charity artist group called The Saints of Paint. 

FAUNA 
Wildlife Sketches in Acrylic and Ink 
By Tess Darling

The artist renders her encounters with wildlife in a linear feel. Interactions with different species are recorded in sketches to capture the observed moment. The energy of the animal is mirrored in visible traces, accentuated by a minimalist setting. In transferring the subject outside its natural realm, the artist uses her self-constructed, artistic impression to represent the human condition. Balancing this condition with the animal form, the effect is a visual interpretation of the coexistence between a living animal and the human who painted it.