"2025 Annual Holiday Show" Featuring Clarence Mayo & Joan McLoughlin
2025-11-07 10:00 - 2026-01-04 17:00 (America/New_York) | 970 Inspiration Drive, Wilmington, NC 28405, 970 Inspiration Drive, Wilmington, NC, 28405, United States
Art in Bloom Gallery is celebrating this holiday season through its Annual Holiday Show, featuring the powerful exhibits of mixed-media painters Clarence Mayo and Joan McLoughlin! Combining strong color with unconventional materials, Clarence’s playful creations draw from instinct, cultural echoes, and his own personal roots. Meanwhile, inspired by the renewal of nature and the energy of abstraction, Joan works freely to express a love of life, imagination, joy and hope.
Join us in the gallery on Sunday, November 9th, 2-5pm for our Holiday Show Reception! Enjoy special refreshments, meet our artists, and enjoy live music by guitarist Miles Moore! Delight in the discovery of our 30+ Gallery Artists’ new holiday creations, and shop for one-of-a-kind gifts that are sure to bring smiles all year-round!
Clarence Mayo: “The Evolution of Identity: Defining Myself”
My work explores the interplay of strong colors, textures, and unconventional materials. I experiment with plaster, drywall compound, silicone acrylic chalk, modeling paste, wallpaper adhesive, acrylic paint, oil stick, and cold wax and oil – applied with whatever tool feels right in the moment: brushes, palette knives, credit cards, plastic bags, fingers, spoons, and forks.
These studies often emerge as intuitive, primitive, childlike, and abstract expressionist. They reflect a deep curiosity about form and surface, while drawing inspiration from African art symbolism, outsider art, and my own family history. Each piece is a layered exploration of material and memory, shaped as much by play and instinct as by cultural echoes and personal roots.
Joan McLoughlin: “Awakening”
My paintings are celebrations of color, movement and emotion.
Inspired by trees, flowers, and the energy of abstract form, I work in a loose, lively style that embraces freedom and spontaneity.
Through variations of size and vibrant hue, I wish to express growth, rebirth, and new beginnings. Each canvas is a reflection of the heart, an exploration of optimism and possibility.
I invite viewers to feel the same sense of love of life, imagination, joy and hope that can be found in my paintings.
