About
Xan McKenna grew up in Boulder, Colorado, taking inspiration from the American Southwest since childhood. Her work has been greatly influenced by her time living abroad in South Africa, Costa Rica, Spain, and Chile. After completing her BA at Williams College in Studio Art, she is currently located in Colorado.
Her work has been displayed in the Denver Capitol Building, CO, the Lichtenstein Center of the Arts in Pittsfield, MA, and the Williams College Museum of Art, MA. In 2024, she was named a Berkshire Art Association Fellow, and was awarded the 2024 Frederick M. Peyser Prize in Painting.
In 2021 and 2022, she was awarded two grants for a Creative Endeavor by the Zilkha Center for the Environment, MA, to pursue investigations of climate change through visual art. She was selected by Boulder County Parks and Open Space for an Artist Residency at Caribou Ranch in 2023.
In February 2025, she had her first solo exhibition at North Boulder Art District, A Current Beyond.
Her work will be featured as part of The Human Animal at The Dairy Center for the Arts in November, 2026.
Artist Statement
Xan McKenna creates visual worlds that complicate spatial boundaries in remembered and imagined landscapes, working with intuitive currents of paint and light. Her work centers on the emotional dissonance surrounding her experience in nature, manifesting in abstract forms of isolation, trepidation, and wonder.
Using her own photographs of nature and figures as references, she explores the meaning of real and imagined, reflecting her fragmented experience of place and identity and the way that once-real places morph and mutate in her memory. Memory erosion takes on the form of an encroaching visual force of color that releases the image into a tenuous, otherworldly space.
She uses light to create and dissolve the illusion of wholeness of the world, and to distort surfaces of space and time, capturing ephemeral yet infinite moments. She blurs the boundary between figure and environment, as a way to render a memory and real space that is in flux like water itself.
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Education
2024 | BA, Williams College, Williamstown, MA
Study Abroad
Spring 2023 | Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, Chile
Fall 2022 | Hamilton College, Madrid, Spain
Solo Exhibitions
2025 | A Current Beyond, North Boulder Art District, Boulder, CO
Group Exhibitions
2024 | Instead of Sleeping, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA
2024 | Berkshire Art Association Juried College Fellowship Show, Lichtenstein Center of the Arts, Pittsfield, MA
2020-2024 | Semester Big Art Show, Williams College Department of Art, Williamstown, MA
Artist Residencies
2023 | Caribou Ranch, Boulder County Parks and Open Space, Colorado
Honors & Awards
2024 | Frederick M. Peyser Prize in Painting, Williamstown, MA
2024 | Berkshire Art Association Fellow, Pittsfield, MA
2022 | Williams College Center for Environmental Studies, Summer Grant Recipient for Creative Endeavor
2021 | Williams College Center for Environmental Studies, Summer Grant Recipient for Creative Endeavor
2020 | 2nd Place Winner of Colorado Congressional Art Competition
Professional & Teaching Experience
2023-24 | Buxton School, Tutor, Williamstown, MA
2023-24 | Mt. Greylock Regional High School, Tutor, Williamstown MA
2021-24 | Williams College, Teaching Assistant for Zambezi Marimba Band
2023 | Tertulias Art Gallery, Creative Design Intern, Boulder, CO
2020 | Wild Bear Summer Nature Camp, Art Camp Counselor, Nederland, CO
2019 | Open Window Studio, Arts Camp Counselor, Boulder, CO
Commissions
Commissions are currently open.
To commission work, please contact:
xanmckenna@gmail.com
Xan McKenna 