The tools for taming animals are well known and the terms are concrete: Cages, chains, yokes and the cutting bridle. The bonds of humanity are not so simple. Language, laws, politics, religion, education, architecture . . . culture offers meaning and safety, but at a price. In this exhibition, Allison Rathan explores the struggle of domestication, and praises a spirit so powerful that it can never truly be expressed or contained. 

Rathan was born in Nuremberg, Germany, to Czechoslovakian and Serbo-Croatian translators. She paints emotive portraits and figures using watercolor, acrylic and resin. Her artwork is a visual storybook, created to invoke visceral emotion in the viewer as they create their own narrative. She is inspired by Hemingway's philosophy for writing; to make the reader and viewer feel as if it all happened to them, and that afterwards, it all belongs to them. She studied Japanese at the University of Minnesota and fine art and economics at the University of Houston. She currently paints out of her studio in the Ozark Mountains.

On view through Sept. 4.