Invisible Resonance
Duet Exhibition Featuring
C.S. McIntire
Lee Ann Thill
Invisible Resonance
Curatorial Statement
Invisible Resonance brings together the abstract practices of Lee Ann Thill and C.S. McIntire in an exhibition that explores the unseen forces shaping human experience. Though their visual languages emerge from different personal perspectives, both artists embrace abstraction as a means of communicating what often remains beyond the reach of representation. Through layered surfaces, intuitive gestures, and organic forms, they reveal that some of our most profound experiences are those that cannot be directly observed, but are deeply felt.
For Lee Ann, abstraction becomes a deeply personal language through which invisible disability, identity, and resilience are made visible. Richly textured surfaces, cellular forms, and sculpted lines evolve through a process of layering, concealment, and revelation. Her materials function as metaphors for the body itself, while transparency and opacity reflect the complex relationship between what is seen and what remains hidden. The act of making mirrors experiences of healing, adaptation, and the continual negotiation between vulnerability and strength, allowing the work to embody both personal narrative and universal reflection.
C.S. McIntire approaches abstraction as an intuitive dialogue between emotion, imagination, and the natural world. Guided by instinct rather than predetermined composition, each painting becomes an open space where color, gesture, and movement unfold organically. Inspired by nature’s rhythms and the emotional landscape of everyday life, McIntire’s work transforms the creative process into one of release, reflection, and discovery. Rather than illustrating a fixed idea, each composition emerges through trust in spontaneity, inviting viewers to experience painting as a living record of perception and feeling.
Together, Lee Ann and McIntire demonstrate that abstraction is not the absence of meaning, but a powerful language capable of expressing experiences that resist literal description. One artist reveals the invisible realities carried within the body, while the other uncovers the emotional and intuitive currents that shape our inner worlds. Their practices remind us that what cannot be seen is often what most profoundly defines us.
Invisible Resonance invites viewers to move beyond recognition and into sensation—to experience painting not simply as an image, but as an encounter with presence, process, and perception. In the dialogue between these two artists, abstraction becomes a shared space where the visible and invisible meet, allowing deeply personal experiences to resonate with a universal human understanding.
ABOUT C.S. McIntire
C.S. McIntire (b. 1966, San José) is a self-taught painter whose practice is shaped by visual intuition, design training, and a lifelong sensitivity to color, form, and perception. He has exhibited in juried exhibitions and solo shows throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. McIntire earned a Bachelor of Arts in Advertising from San José State University and later worked as a graphic designer and art director, developing a strong understanding of composition and visual structure. His work is represented by galleries across the United States and Germany, reflecting a growing international presence. Nature remains central to both his life and practice, often guiding the emotional tone and palette of his paintings. His process is intuitive and unplanned, guided more by gesture and instinct than predetermined composition. Brushstrokes, marks, and layers emerge organically, allowing the work to evolve through discovery rather than control. Inspired by Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Richard Diebenkorn, and Vincent van Gogh, McIntire’s paintings exist between observation and intuition, where color and movement become a language for emotion and inner clarity.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am both thankful and frustrated by my extremely vivid imagination. I’ve always been a visual person – part observer and part daydreamer. Nature and my studio are the perfect settings for both these parts to run free. My process is intuitive; brush strokes, composition and palettes are not planned, but are purely organic. It is absolutely freeing for me. My process is not only creative, but it is also emotionally therapeutic. I am grateful to be able to drop into this authentic, open space and to let the paint and marks flow without hesitation, restraint, or judgement. I draw inspiration from artists such as De Kooning, Mitchell, Diebenkorn and Van Gogh as well as by colors and forms found in nature. I continue to observe, explore and grow both as an individual and as an artist.
Featured Works of C.S. McIntire
ABOUT Lee Ann Thill
Lee Ann Thill (b. 1973) is a painter and mixed-media collage artist based in New Jersey, USA, whose abstracted cellular forms move beyond the clinical to the felt experience of invisible disabilities. Initially focused on a lifetime of type 1 diabetes, the work has expanded to encompass neurodivergence and her relationship with a loved one living with a neurodegenerative disease, reflecting a broader understanding of invisible disability as personal, relational and temporal.
After graduating from Tyler School of Art in 1996, she went back to school to become an art therapist, a decision shaped by chronic illness and a need for healthcare access. Thirty years later, she has returned to a full-time studio practice, and in the brief time since, her work has gained early critical recognition and been acquired for private collections — indicators of a practice gaining momentum.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work explores the emotional, relational experience of living with invisible disabilities, not as a fixed state, but as something that evolves over time. These are conditions that infiltrate every aspect of daily life, demanding constant management and vigilance. My studio practice exists in deliberate contrast: improvisational and spontaneous, guided by instinct as much as intention. Cellular forms are my visual language. The biological processes underlying invisible disability are continuous and imperceivable, so reimagined cells hold transient, multifaceted experiences that resist literal representation. A single diagnosis was the initial focus of my work, but use of this imagery has expanded to multiple disabilities, including the relational experience of navigating a loved one's disability.
Working with acrylic, ink and paper on canvas and wood, adhering, pooling, washing and waiting mirror medical treatments, so materials and process become extensions of the body and its care. Sculpted linework suggests membranes, containing the cellular forms that give definition to the conditions that permeate every aspect of life. These are not illustrations of illness, but reflections of psychological weight, relational shifts, and an identity shaped by the diffuse nature of disability. The work operates at an intimate scale, richly layered and textured surfaces that invite touch. People have described an impulse to reach toward the work, and there is something in that tension between proximity and restraint that reflects the experience of invisible disability — everpresent but out of reach and unseen. The work invites the viewer into that ambiguity — making space for experiences that can be personal and unacknowledged.
