Priscilla Fowler
“Fragile Interior I”, 27” x 35”, mixed media (sepia ink, acrylic washes), on Fabriano Artistico paper
“Fragile Interior II”, 27” x 35”, mixed media (sepia ink, acrylic washes), on Fabriano Artistico paper
“Fragile Interior III”, 27” x 35”, mixed media (sepia ink, acrylic washes), on Fabriano Artistico paper
Many of my family members are religious non-artists, whose taste in art tends to reproductions of paintings of floral arrangements, bucolic landscapes, and praying hands. I want these people whom I love to
understand the work I make and why. Yet I am drawn at a gut level to formal issues such as composition and color, which, for me, are best satisfied working non-representationally. Thus a fundamental problem in my work is making abstract imagery with enough accessibility to draw in the average viewer.
Many examples of this can be seen in my show up through early June at the Pattern Shop Studio.
Beyond issues of content, I seek a mode of working that is meditative, an integration of the process of working with the work itself. In painting and drawing, this means loosely dropped-in thinned color, masking and layers, and lines to pick out a suggestive imagery and compositional substrate from seemingly random areas of wash. This attentiveness to the value of accidents is for me a way of accessing the spiritual and is how I draw on but manifest differently my family’s religious orientation. What I hope people take from my work, in contemplating the give and take of color and space, is something similar: a quiet (if complex) peace a non-dogmatic space away from the hectic demands of everyday life.
