CLMA Exhibition Delves Into the Abyss

For Immediate Release
November 2, 2026
Press Contact: Catherine McIntosh
909 626-1386, cell 713 829-9338
cmcintosh1011@gmail.com

Into the Abyss
December 5, 2026 – March 14, 2027
Claremont Lewis Museum of Art, 200 W. First St., Claremont, CA
Opening Reception: Saturday, December 5, 5-8 p.m.

The Claremont Lewis Museum of Art exhibition Into the Abyss presents work by three artists who explore the picture plane as a portal of infinite space connecting the mind of the artist and the mind of the viewer. Marsia Alexander-Clarke, Richard Brown Lethem, and Eileen Senner each approach this field as a space vast emptiness, yet one of powerful latent energies and transcendent potential.
The exhibition will open with a reception on Saturday, December 5 from 5-8 p.m. and will remain on view through March 14, 2027. The exhibition is generously sponsored by Carol Holder and John Mallinckrodt. The Museum is open Thursday through Sunday in the historic Claremont Depot at 200 W. First Street in Claremont. For hours and more information visit clmoa.org.

Direct link to the web page:
https://clmoa.org/exhibit/into-the-abyss

THE EXHIBITION
Into the Abyss, curated by CLMA Director Seth Pringle, consists of three solo exhibitions organized around a common theme. Artists Marsia Alexander-Clarke (video), Richard Brown Lethem (painting), and Eileen Senner (painting) each explore the picture plane as a portal of infinite space that is an extension of the mind. The “abyss” of this field is approached as a vast emptiness, yet one of powerful latent energies and transcendent potential.
The picture plane is often perceived as either representational (creating an illusion of space that references the physical world) or abstract (dealing with form and color). Alexander-Clarke, Lethem, and Senner, however, all depict elements of the real world in order to access psychological space. In this dynamic, their work is not a mirror of the world; it is a portal between the mind of the artist and the mind of the viewer. Whether realized in painting or video, these artists demonstrate the great potential for enlightenment and existential realization that can be found within a simple rectangle.
Marsia Alexander-Clarke creates videos that depict the real world, but become abstract through a mesmerizing fragmentation and repetition. These slivers, or “marks” as the artist calls them, speak to the limitations of human perception and subjective consciousness. Richard Brown Lethem’s paintings are playful, yet sophisticated, colorful, yet serious. His “Claremont period” 2020-2025, when these paintings were made, saw the development of a symbology that speaks to a cosmic sense of wonder while staying rooted in a matter-of-fact connection to ordinary objects. Eileen Senner’s works in oil on panel offer ethereal depictions of torsos and seascapes at the threshold of a precipice. Senner’s torsos appear as vast space at the opening of a cave, while her seascapes hint at the edge of the world feared by explorers who thought the world was flat. Many dozens of layers create a geological materiality where brushstrokes are swallowed up by the infinite.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Marsia Alexander-Clarke was born and raised in Valparaiso, Chile, of American missionary parents and moved to the United States to attend high school in 1952. She received her B.A. from Park College, Kansas City, Kansas, in 1962, after which she traveled to New York City to further her studies in art. In 1970, she came to California, where she attended Claremont Graduate University and earned her MFA in 1974. During this time her high relief paintings on paper gradually became three-dimensional. A year later, she attended a two-month scholarship residency at McDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire. Upon returning to California, Alexander-Clarke continued developing her sculptures, which she exhibited extensively in California and nationally.

In the late 1980s, she attended video art workshops at the Pasadena Community Access Corporation and has worked with video as her primary medium since then. In 2001, she received an Individual Artist Grant from the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division for her choral video installation, 6 in 1 to 64 CHOIR, which was exhibited at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. In 2018, she became a Fellow in Film-Video from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Richard Brown Lethem was born in Maryville, Missouri in 1932. He began his studies at the Kansas City Art Institute and earned a BFA in 1956 and an MFA at Columbia University. He began teaching at Columbia in 1957 and the following year received a Fulbright Fellowship in painting for study in Paris. He taught at Columbia University, University of Kentucky, Kansas City Art Institute, University of New Hampshire, and the University of Southern Maine. Lethem lived in Claremont from 2020-2025.

His work is held in many public and private collections, including: Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in Claremont; Blanden Museum of Art in Iowa; The Ogunquit Museum of American Art, University of New England Museum, and Bates College Museum in Maine; and Yaddo Foundation and Columbia University in New York.

Eileen Senner is a Claremont-based painter for whom the sea, its endless shifts of color, light, and mood, has been the focus of and inspiration for her studio practice for some years. She earned her MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 1978 and taught art at Scripps College between 1982 and 1993. Her paintings are comprised of up to fifty extremely thin layers of oil paint where drips, splotches and accidents accumulate in the work process and become an essential and embedded aspect of the completed painting.

Senner has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and in several European venues including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France and the National Library in Madrid, Spain. She has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Grants. Her work is held in numerous private collections, the Yale Art Gallery, and Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College.