Leaves, 2022, pastel, pastel pencil on archival Bristol paper, 11” x 11”
NANCY STORROW
Artist Statement
My drawings in two current series, Leaves and Seasonal Notations are reiterative and almost automatic. In Leaves I use contrasting color lines to develop pattern and vibration, while the drawings for Seasonal Notations combine stroking and rubbing the surface with pastel pigment, bringing together the touch or tone of the day with contour lines that cross and interrupt the surface. Both are daily meditations, reflections over the course of months.
I pay close attention to what I am seeing, but allow my hand to direct me. The drawings hover between figuration and abstraction. Variations in gesture, tone, and texture are underscored by placing multiple drawings together. Each drawing is a moment of time, an intake of breath or a heartbeat. It is also a physical document. I have paired current drawings with past wood cuts and included the raw woodblocks. The carvings in the blocks are themselves lines and traces, literal cuts in the wood.
I am evoking transient or ephemeral elements. Recording that which is essential yet unseen in nature - the unexpected or unexplored, a newness layered and edged with grass stains and memories. The leaves quiver, rustle and flicker. Leaves and lines and lines on leaves - streaks and scratches and traces of other lives. There is an essence, a hum to the meadow. The heart of the land is ever present and in it there is an edge of physical deterioration balanced with regeneration.
Nancy Storrow
Past Solo Exhibitions:
Fragile, 2020
Edgeland, 2017
Understory, 2013
Bare Ground, 2011
Findings, 2010
Seen/Not Seen, 2008
Life List, 2005 Translucence, 1999
Augmented Drawings, 1996
Past Group Exhibitions: Reviewed and Sold: Whats Next?, 2022 23°47', 2°27', 2°51', 2021 SYMPOIESIS, 2020 Eleven x Seventeen, 2019
Women On The Line, 2017
Who Cares?, 2017
Wish you were here, 2015
A.I.R. ReFreshed, 2015
If These Walls... II, 2015
If These Walls..., 2014
Currents, 1998
8 at A.I.R., 1995
Works On Paper, 1995