Toward Abstraction: Paintings by Anne Marchand and Lesley Anne Spowart opens Friday, October 20th at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts. A reception for the artists will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibit is free and open to the public.
The exhibition features individual works by Anne Marchand and Lesley Anne Spowart, reflecting their interests in figuration and abstraction and serial processes across a range of media. The exhibit explores issues related to isolation, creative adaptation, novel ways to connect and a vision for the future. Taken together, these paintings straddle the line between representation and abstraction, revealing how ordinary objects often serve as a point of departure for an artist’s abstract vision, or, alternatively, how an artist’s abstract forms may subtly suggest recognizable elements.
The exhibit will run through Saturday, November 25th. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 4:00 p.m.
About the Artists:
Lesley Anne Spowart was born and raised in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She attended the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, receiving her B.A. in Art History in 1979. During her time there, she assisted in installing the work of Richard Fleishner, Sol Lewitt and Larry Bell. Relocating to Davis, Ca., shortly thereafter, she began her graduate studies in Art History at UC Davis, continuing graduate work at UC Riverside and Cal State Fullerton, where she went on to install works by Beatrice Wood, Viola Frey and John Buck. Her education in Art History, Exhibition Design and Museum Studies has strongly motivated her to create and display her own work.
Lesley has shown her work in galleries on the Monterey Peninsula in solo and group shows. Among these are Gallery Mar, Carmel; American Art Gallery, Carmel; Marjorie Evans Gallery, Carmel. Her work is found in corporate and private collections both here and abroad.
Anne Marchand was born in New Orleans. She majored in art at Auburn University, graduating with a BA, and then earned an MFA from the University of Georgia. Her early artistic focus was the figure, and she was especially drawn to the work of Francis Bacon for his expressive paintings of the human body. Marchand’s other early influences include 20th century modernist painters, the Abstract Expressionists, and the work of Carl Jung, with his reflections on dream imagery and psychological states. She credits her upbringing in New Orleans for her sensitivity to, “a sense of awe at the power and majesty of nature.”
In 2005, Marchand’s Ellipsis paintings, with their arcing lines and vivid color, expressed her desire to create “cosmoscapes”, inspired by deep space. Mystical themes came to the fore in the paintings, stimulated by readings by Garcia Lorca, Kandinsky, and Rumi. Travel to India brought a range of new color palettes and fabrics that she incorporated into her work.
Beginning in 2010, Marchand began experimenting in paintings with acrylic mediums and interference and pearlescent pigments. With these materials, qualities of radiance and light became active metaphors reflecting an inner state of being. Images of planets from the Hubble telescope inspired the painter to introduce circular imagery into her work. The nebulas and galaxies suggested biological structures, and Marchand realized the connection between space and the body as manifestations
Pictured: “Blue Squared” – Lesley Anne Spowart
