BERNICE FAEGENBURG
“NATURE’S ESSENCE”
April 28-May 16th, 2015
Reception: Thursday, May 7, 6-8 pm
Chelsea: Viridian Artists is pleased to present “NATURE’S ESSENCE ” a series of new paintings on paper by Bernice Faegenburg. The exhibit extends from April 28 – May 16th, 2015 with a reception: Thursday, May 7, 6-8 pm.
Bernice Faegenburg is an artist who enjoys experimentation and exploring a variety of media, especially all things Asian. She recently began a serious study of Asian Brush Painting, but traces of brush work have always been a part of the sensuous line in her drawings and compositions.
The focus in these images is on nature and its essence that spring’s annual rebirth brings. Living near the sea and removed from the urban environment, Faegenburg’s art always is filled with the resplendence of nature, even when she focuses on only the clouds drifting by. Though she has often worked on canvas in the past, combining sketches, notes, images, photographs, the new work she has made for this exhibition is primarily Asian brush work on rice paper. In some works like “The Mist”, the composition & imagery is quite traditional but in others, like “Magnolia” & “Harbinger of Spring” the lines are more uniquely drawn, mixing the Western and Eastern line and depiction.
Faegenburg approaches her art instinctively, allowing her imagery to emerge and grow out of her experience and intuition. For her, the most important part of art making is the doing, for she is an artist to whom process is as important as the end result. Fortunately however, the end result is always both glowingly personal as well as instinctually beautiful. Picking a path and following wherever it leads her has always been Faegenburg’s artistic choice, for she is a “traveler” in both her art and her life. Organic fragments of memories and images are her palette as much as color is and her sketchbook jottings are juxtapositions that become creative “conversations” of color and shapes on canvas and rice papers. “Swimming” with the black blossoms above the fish swimming below both feel to be rare and imaginary moments that traveled from the artist’s hand through the brush and finally to the paper.
The artist did undergraduate work at the Tyler School of Fine Arts and Temple University in Philadelphia, where she studied printmaking & egg tempera pinting in the Renaissance method. After graduation, she moved to New York and studied at the National Academy of Design and received a Masters Degree at C.W. Post College, where she studied painting and graphics with New York abstract painter Robert Yasuda and later, Oriental philosophy and its relationship to painting with Jerry Okimoto. Her art will again be included in the prestigious Florence Biennial. The influence of Asian art and thought has always been an influence in her work.
Gallery hours Tuesday – Saturday 12-6 PM
