Seasonal Notations
Nancy Storrow
GALLERY I
Nancy Storrow, Leaves (detail), 2022, Pastel, pastel pencil on archival Bristol paper, 11 x 11 inches.
October 14 – November 12, 2023
Opening reception: Saturday, October 14 from 6–8pm
A.I.R Gallery is pleased to announce Seasonal Notations, an exhibition by New York Member Nancy Storrow. Comprised of serial drawings on paper, Seasonal Notations is a diaristic rendering of her days surrounded by the natural environment in rural Vermont. This is Storrow’s thirteenth exhibition at A.I.R.
In this new body of work, simple elemental forms ground the drawings and expand their reference to the earth. The drawings are meditative abstractions, or visual texts, displayed as gridded strips and arcs.
The presence of Storrow’s hand is fundamental. Her drawings are reiterative daily meditations. Composed over the course of months, they become intensely subjective. In the Leaves series, she uses contrasting color lines to develop pattern and vibration. In Seasonal Notations, she strokes and rubs the surface with clouds of pastel pigment, bringing together the touch or tone of the day with contour lines that cross or interrupt the surface.
In her process, Storrow pays close attention to what she sees, but also allows her hand to direct her. Some images are drawn while barely looking at the paper, hovering between figuration and abstraction. The variations in gesture, tone, and texture in each are underscored by placing multiple drawings together. In repetition and imitation, each work is different, yet the same. Something new arises out of a lost line or an inadvertent motion.
Storrow’s responsive drawings are a distillation of the Vermont environment where she has lived for over fifty years. She walks the land across seasons, watches the cycles of weather, listens to the birdlife, and knows the trees in all shapes. She is inspired by the unexpected or unexplored. She evokes transient or ephemeral elements in nature that are essential, yet obscure. Leaves quiver, rustle, and flicker, becoming streaks or traces of other lives. Her meditations have amplified her interest in time. She has included raw woodblocks, from a previous print series, which bear residue from the process of creation. The carvings in the blocks are themselves lines and traces, literal cuts in the wood, that relate to her two recent series. The heart of the land is ever present in her drawings, balancing physical deterioration with regeneration.
Artist member of A.I.R. Gallery since 1982, Nancy Storrow has had 13 solo exhibitions and has been included in many gallery group exhibitions. She has exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe. Recent one person exhibitions include Fragile, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 2020; Edgeland: Recent Drawings, Next Stage Arts Project, Putney, VT; Recollecting Nature, Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro, VT; Understory, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Steinhardt Conservatory Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; and Konsthallen, Sandviken, Sweden, where she gave a Gallery Talk. One of her drawings was selected for the Wall Program and frontispiece of the program booklet for Yellow Barn Music, Putney, VT. Her work was reproduced for the cover of Clockhouse Journal, Vol. Seven, Goddard College, 2019. Her exhibition Fragile was featured in the series “Portrait of the Artist ” for The American Scholar, 2021 and her exhibition Edgeland was reviewed in Artscope Magazine, 2018. Nancy Storrow lives and works in Putney, Vermont with her husband and Maine Coon cat. She volunteers with the Southern Vermont Sister District Project and is the Art Curator for the Putney Public Library.
View the Press Release here.
View Nancy Storrow’s page here.
Photography: Matthew Sherman