GreenHill 200 North Davie Street, Box No. 4 Greensboro, NC 27401 www.GreenHillNC.org Published in conjunction with GreenHill’s exhibition The Edge of Perception: Richard Fennell Retrospective June 16 - August 20, 2017 GreenHill Š2017 GreenHill All rights reserved. This publication is protected by copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the copyright holder. Cover and Book Design: Lauren Davis Gordon, Marketing + Design Guru, GreenHill Cover image: Self-Portrait, 2014, oil on canvas, 22 x 18 inches Gotham font family used throughout Photography: David Ramsey & Toni Tronu Printing: Printery, Greensboro, NC. 130# Cover and 100# Blazer Satin Text printed on Xerox Color Press 1000
INT RODUCTION At GreenHill, we believe it is imperative to give artists exhibition opportunities throughout their careers. Of special significance, however, is when we can celebrate an illustrious artistic career such as Richard Fennell’s through a retrospective. The Edge of Perception: Richard Fennell Retrospective is not only an important benchmark exhibition for Richard, but for GreenHill it reaches back to our founding roots when a group of UNC Greensboro artists came together to form an organization with a focus on showcasing the work of professional North Carolina artists. Since 1980, GreenHill has exhibited Fennell’s work eight times, with a solo exhibition in 1995. Twenty-two years later, we are proud to once again give Richard an opportunity to present a wide body of work, ranging from three-dimensional to landscape to figurative works on paper. A retrospective by its very nature requires collaboration —between the artist and curator, and between the artist, curator and collectors. More than 30 of the artist’s collectors have loaned pieces to the The Edge of Perception which will feature over 150 works. The full list of lenders is annotated at the end of this beautiful catalogue. Lenders include long-time and early adopter of GreenHill and Emeritus board member Susan Edwards; a true believer in our mission and power of the arts, Reid Phillips; an important collector of NC art, the Weaver Foundation; two other Emeritus board members Kay Stern and Adair Armfield; and early Fennell collectors Joy & Richard Krueger and Harriet & Elms Allen. Many others have loaned works they have owned and cherished over the years and we are grateful they have allowed us to hold onto them for a few months.
Still Life with Oranges and Pots, 1996 oil on canvas, 35 x 44 inches
I hope you enjoy what you will see in the following pages. A special thanks to Gib McEachran who is helping to support the production the catalogue, Director, Curatorial & Artistic Programs and exhibition curator Edie Carpenter, Curatorial Assistant, Erin Riggins, Marketing & Design Guru and catalogue designer Lauren Gordon, and of course, Richard Fennell whose work has given us joy for over 40 years. LAURA WAY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GREENHILL
CURATOR’S INTRODUCTION Richard Fennell is most widely known for the luminous landscapes, interiors and still lifes he has painted during the past four decades while based in the communities of Whitsett and Grassy Creek, North Carolina. The vivid palette and Impressionist paint handling that are most often associated with Fennell’s style are the result of a lifelong aesthetic drive. Fennell describes his project in these terms: “My work, as personal as it is, is basically the study of light upon form and space. In pursuit of this study, I try to merge a visual truth of what is seen with basic abstract elements inherent in painting and in nature.” As the first comprehensive look at his work GreenHill’s exhibition presents the different means Fennell has used to merge these elements. Fennell’s achievement is recounted across over one hundred works in bronze, watercolor, drawing, pastel, painting and printmaking on view in The Edge of Perception. One of the earliest works in the exhibition is a 1969 self-portrait painted while Fennell was still in college. The resolve with which he had already viewed his chosen profession is reflected in the jaunty hat and firm arm balancing brushes and palette. This is the first of a number of self-portraits created over the years that portray the artist in a heroic mode. In 1977 following an injury that extended his undergraduate studies by several years, Fennell joined the group of young artists who studied under sculptor Peter Agostini, painters Andrew Martin and Ben Burns, and printmaker John Maggio at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Fennell’s early study of printmaking had produced an accomplished series of prints of seated men on benches. In contrast to the psychological isolation of the figures in Bench (1974) a 1976 lithograph depicting people gathered to listen to music in the woods under a canopy of dense branches
is a moment of secular communion. The immersion of man in nature prefaces the expansion of this theme throughout Fennell’s work. A striking later engraving of fields illustrates the particular reverberation he would elicit from landscape subjects. In Landscape II (1981) open fields rendered with minute crosshatching stretching across the foreground of the engraving are edged with clumps of winter-bare trees. The countryside is not idealized yet is wholly there, full of an abundance not yet apparent.
Self-Portrait, 1969, oil on canvas, 34 x 28 inches
Fennell has stated that sculpture changed completely how he thought about painting. At UNCG Fennell became the graduate assistant of Peter Agostini who expounded a synthetic approach in which the ultimate goal for the artist is to arrive at a state of “happening when a person exists in it...not realism or naturalism but how that person looks, feels”.¹ Agostini instructed his students in life drawing and modelling to “work from the edge”: to observe where the edge of the figure intersects negative space around it and build form through registrations of contours from all sides. A work was considered finished when it was “full of life.” Fennell absorbed and mastered this approach as evidenced by the standing bronze figure of a woman whose attitudes change and are activated when seen from different sides. Fennell’s early watercolors and drawings of female models are closely related to sculptures from that period, and isolate the figure on the page emphasizing the negative space surrounding them. Though Fennell’s oeuvre encompasses different formal directions the method of “working from the edge” would remain a constant.
In the Woods, 1976, lithograph, 30 x 22 inches
After leaving UNCG Fennell and his wife Dottie moved to a century old house on 5 acres in the unincorporated community of Whitsett. Throughout his career Fennell has turned to the places, people and objects of his intimate environment for subject matter, often returning to the same subjects again and again. The Fennells’ daughter Katie is the artist’s preferred model and has figured in many works over the years. The pensive self-possession of Katie on the Couch (1998) is echoed in early portraits such as Katie in Red Hat (1998). A series of large full-figure portraits from 2002 portraying Katie in a long yellow dress with puffy sleeves evoke another age, creating a tension between the individual physiognomy and psychological presence of the sitter and her transformation into a painterly ideal through the effects of light on her diaphanous dress. A group of small paintings of rooms in the artist’s home framed in narrow vertical apertures are an early example of Fennell’s study of interior spaces. Doors, cupboards and picture frames depicted as flat geometric shapes lead the eye inward. Works such as Doorway (1983) are almost abstract in their spare lack of detail. The attraction of the
endless variations possible with abstract design also informs paintings such as Highway, Gibsonville (1986) in which the rectangular opening under a bridge over the highway echoes that of the picture plane. Fennell’s impulse to “go further” towards abstraction is always mediated by a conscious decision not to abandon the “reality of the thing.” The artist’s attachment to this reality is evident in an exquisite drawing and series of small paintings of Gibsonville, the closest town to Whitsett. These “townscapes” portray a row of two story buildings whose simple facades are treated with an atmospheric fidelity attuned to that of American masters such as Edward Hopper and are enveloped in light and air. Though he continues to work within this quiet vein Fennell also seeks to realize a more exalted version of reality, his quest nothing less than to transmit a wonder and excitement that is the equivalent of the act of seeing. Early Whitsett interiors present views of quiet domestic spaces harboring a variable light that enters through windows and falls on floors. They show the artist working to capture the particular nature of light as it enters the dark house from the outside and through their mood and tone evoke 17th century Dutch interiors. Details such as a shawl left on the back of a chair in Interior with Open Door and Chair (1985) allude to the house’s inhabitants yet daylight passing through cloth or glancing off a cup is the true actor here. In the absence of people the house itself takes the forefront. The Whitsett staircase, a central axis at the heart of the house has been the subject of numerous works over the years and a theater for the transformation in Fennell’s work occurring between 1983 and 1993. Stairway (1984) relates to similar interiors with its serenely ordered elements of decor rendered with relatively flat paint as the house appears to be waiting for its occupants in calm obscurity. A nearly identical view with slight changes in perspective and the addition of a grandfather clock at the top of the stairs is depicted in the large oil on canvas Interior with Stairway (1993).
Bench, 1974, etching, 10 x 23 inches
Yet it is as if the scene has been charged with a live circuit, seen through a brilliant lens that has warmed the mauve and brick tones of walls and steps in the earlier work to pure cadmium red and crimson. The banister is now placed at the exact center of the composition. Its ascending vertical arrives at a bright chartreuse door and the circular finial and globe ceiling fixture have become two poles in an electrified cosmos awash in color. To understand this dramatic change in Fennell’s approach to color we must return to the notion of “working from the edge.” Fennell’s watercolors are key transitional works that allowed the artist to abandon preliminary sketches in pencil and work out his compositions directly. An unfinished work on paper offers a glimpse into this process. Marks of different colors denoting walls and other objects are made at different places to register the edge of a counter or handle of a pitcher. These touches are reinforced until the three-dimensional underpinnings of the composition jell. The process is no different for landscapes and is one of “constantly looking at the edge in space, then dealing with that -- the negative space -- then working forward, and then sort of meandering in and out and gradually everything comes together.” From the mid-eighties on Fennell has employed heightened registers of color and strong contrasts to describe the effect of light on objects such as the jewel tones of humble objects on a table top in Interior with Chairs and Table (1992) or the sunlight stroking the back of the family dog Daisy. During this time Fennell began to use pure oil colors out of the tube. He mixed colors only when he observed a shade he had no equivalent for resulting in a palette loaded with dozens of versions of the same color. A radiant morning is captured in Kitchen Interior (1988) that evokes Richard Diebenkorn in its abstract grid design
shoring up large areas of golden color. In other works Fennell exploits the “push/pull” effect of laying pure colors next to each other as in the vibrant Kitchen Interior with Chair (1993). A debt to watercolor is evident in Fennell’s use of negative space in Still Life with Blue Pitcher (2010). Parcels of white canvas highlight the play of color in this painting in which a blue pitcher at the center of the canvas is pushed forward and back between a quartet of circular fruit on the table and an exuberant tangle of flowers overwhelming their confines. Fennell’s still lifes offer insights into his investigation of color and composition as a builder of forms in the
Kitchen Interior, 1988, oil on paper, 26 x 21 inches
tradition of Cezanne. Works from the early nineties are painted in limpid semi-transparent hues that describe clay vessels and half full wine bottles grouped on an expanse of table cloth and viewed in cool studio light. Later still lifes assemble many of the same elements along horizontal shelves placed parallel to the bottom edge of the picture plane in lively rows similar to Fennell’s alignments of houses on small town streets. The representation of Dottie Fennell’s pottery is a graceful presence in Fennell’s works. The high handled blue teapot in the sparkling Still Life with Oranges and Pots (1996) in the Weaver Foundation collection alludes to the creative practice of the artist’s wife whose portrait figures in a rare watercolor. The bounty of Fennell’s modest tabletop worlds, in contrast to the fine silver and crystal signifying an owner’s social status in Baroque still lifes, reside in their abundant color and a vision of fullness that transposes in personal terms the contemplative eye of the artist. Fennell’s iconic paintings of houses and landscapes reveal a similar evolution toward a synthetic approach to composition and color as his still lifes. The artist’s longstanding engagement with painting in nature began with days alone in empty fields painting from life. Long hours of “plodding along” were sometimes rewarded with moments of overwhelming sensation and clarity during which the experience of what he was seeing overwhelmed him. Though he now will use photographs to document information for his works, transcribing the visual contact with nature and fixing it in the “utterly foreign” medium of oil paint continues to be the impetus for Fennell’s landscape practice. One of Fennell’s earliest paintings of houses depicts his Whitsett neighbors’ house with its triangular roof catching the morning light. The treatment of the expanse of field in broad areas of burnished gold and green is comparable to the soft yet affirmed paint handling in still lifes of the same period. A shift is already occurring in the 1990 pastel on paper House, Gibsonville in which direct drawing enlivens the austere forms of the house with feathery touches of pale citron. A large oil painting of the Fennell’s house in Whitsett fills the entire canvas and is seen through a network of pines in the foreground in deep purple shadow. The perspective places the viewer next to the artist as light bisects the house into dark and light zones enlisting us in the battle being waged on the house’s façade. Fennell’s attachment to Whitsett led him to run for mayor in order to organize resistance to development swallowing the old homes and farms he painted. The desire to work in a place where he knew he could return to a favorite site and find it transformed only by the weather influenced the Fennells’ move in 2000 to Grassy Creek, a mountain hamlet in Ashe County. Fennell built a house and studio on the side of a foothill and moved a 19th century cabin to the property. House at Damascus (2000) is just one example of multiple versions of this abandoned house in a small town on the Appalachian Trail just over the Virginia border created by the artist. Fennell has stated that nostalgia has no part in his interest in old houses, that they are merely ideal vessels for his formal investigations. A series of paintings of “the oldest house in Hyde County” presents different views of the same house using colorful shorthand to transcribe forms and shadows as the house appears completely different in each panel. Yet there is a particular form of triumph over time in the transformation that his brush achieves in the House at Damascus while describing a rusty roof with lozenges of copper, an overgrown yard with a myriad of lush tones and reflections of the sky on the arrow-shaped
façade. A similar incarnation is achieved in Red House, Hyde County (2012) whose upright front is presented as the late afternoon colors it scarlet and for a moment it defies the flat land and “holds on to what it used to be.” Fennell’s recent work demonstrates an almost automatic paint handling in response to a flow of sensations which is prefigured in the rendering of two large Ashe County paintings of exactly the same view at different seasons of the year. In Old Field Creek Road, Summer (2007-8) an open vista of climbing terrain is painted in dense passages of greens breaking open only at the sky and a clearing where two pines stand guard. The same two pines appear in Old Field Creek Road, Autumn (2013), as the change in season is not only reflected in dominant reds and yellows but in the use of white which emerges between rhythmic brushstrokes designating foliage amplifying the overall brightness of the painting. The concept of painting as a projection of the artist as a focusing eye has its foundation in Impressionism and Fennell’s return to specific sites during different times and seasons reflects this parentage. In two recent paintings of marshlands near Nags Head, Fennell’s brush work records constant unconscious focal readjustments to transcribe visual perception. An effervescent painting entitled Autumn becomes a kind of dance with the canvas in which the danger can be to go too far and lose hold of the “reality of the thing” in the ferment of painting. Fennell states he is “still trying to figure it out” and his devotion to his artistic vision evokes that of the painter Winslow Homer who Henry James described as “a genuine painter; that is to see, and to reproduce what he sees, is his only care.”² EDIE CARPENTER DIRECTOR, CURATORIAL & ARTISTIC PROGRAMS ¹ Dialogue with Peter Agostini, Homer Yost, Corradi UNCG Arts Magazine, Spring 1984
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²John Updike, Still Looking, Epic Homer, p. 58
Landscape II, 1981, etching, 11 x 31 inches
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All other quotations from interviews with the artist
Standing Figure, 1982, bronze, 19 x 5.5 x 5 inches
Left: Standing Nude, 1980, watercolor on paper, 24 x 19 inches Right: Seated Figure, 1978, lithograph, 18 x 12 inches
Left: Doorway, 1983, oil on board, 18.5 x 9 inches Right: Interior with Open Door and Chair, 1985, oil on board, 20 x 9.5 inches
Highway, Gibsonville, 1986, oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches
Untitled (buildings, powerlines), 1994, graphite on paper, 7.5 x 10 inches
Townscape III, 1994, oil on paper, 22 x 26 inches
Interior with Chairs and Table, 1992, oil on canvas, 21 x 21 inches
Daisy, 2001, oil on board, 20 x 24 inches
Kitchen Interior with Chair, 1993, oil on paper, 23 x 17 inches
Interior with Stairway, 1993, oil on canvas, 48 x 40 inches
Still Life with Pottery, 1989, oil on canvas, 36 x 40 inches
Top: Still Life, 1994, oil on canvas, 17 x 28 inches
Bottom: Still Life, 1994, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches
Still Life, 2008, oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches
Still Life, 2010, oil on canvas, 24.5 x 20.5 inches
Interior with Chairs, 2005, oil on canvas, 26.5 x 20 inches
Left: Katie, 1989, oil on board, 14 x 9.5 inches Right: Katie in Red Hat, 1998, oil on paper, 25 x 25 inches
Katie in Yellow Dress, 2002, oil on canvas, 48 x 40 inches
Sherman’s House, 1990, oil on canvas, 42 x 50 inches
House in Whitsett, 1999, oil on canvas, 44.5 x 52.5 inches
Grassy Creek, 2002, oil on canvas, 20 x 25 inches
Grassy Creek after Storm, 2003-4, oil on canvas, 35.5 x 51.5 inches
Left: House, Gibsonville, 1990, pastel on paper, 30 x 24 inches Right: House at Damascus, 2000, oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches
Left: House, South Carolina, 2001, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches Right: House at Tazewell, 2011, oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches
House at Scottsville, 2014, oil on linen, 36 x 48 inches
Oldest House in Hyde County I, II, III & IV, 2014, oil on board, 25 x 29 inches
Trees, Late Winter I, 2010, pastel on paper, 18.5 x 22.5 inches
Beach Houses, Nags Head I, 2014, pastel on paper, 18.5 x 22.5 inches
Old Field Creek Road, Summer, 2007-8, oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches
Old Field Creek Road, Autumn, 2013, oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches
Grandfather Mountain Early Spring Snow, 2012-13, oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches
Marsh Scene I, 2014, oil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches
LIST OF WORKS Self-Portrait, 1969 oil on canvas, 34 x 28 inches
House, Gibsonville, 1990 pastel on paper, 30 x 24 inches
Bench, 1974, etching 10 x 23 inches
Sherman’s House, 1990 oil on canvas, 42 x 50 inches Collection of Rosanne Ross
In the Woods, 1976 lithograph, 30 x 22 inches Seated Figure, 1978 lithograph, 18 x 12 inches Standing Nude, 1980 watercolor on paper, 24 x 19 inches Collection of Susan J. Edwards Landscape II, 1981 etching, 11 x 31 inches Standing Figure, 1982 bronze, 19 x 5.5 x 5 inches Collection of Pat and Slade Howell Doorway, 1983 oil on board, 18.5 x 9 inches Interior with Open Door and Chair, 1985 oil on board, 20 x 9.5 inches Highway, Gibsonville, 1986 oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches Kitchen Interior, 1988 oil on paper, 26 x 21 inches Collection of Dottie Fennell Katie, 1989 oil on board, 14 x 9.5 inches Still Life with Pottery, 1989 oil on canvas, 36 x 40 inches
Interior with Chairs and Table, 1992 oil on canvas, 21 x 21 inches Collection of Carol Douglas Interior with Stairway, 1993 oil on canvas, 48 x 40 inches Collection of Kay Stern Kitchen Interior with Chair, 1993 oil on paper, 23 x 17 inches Collection of Harriet and Elms Allen Untitled (buildings, powerlines), 1994 graphite on paper, 7.5 x 10 inches Townscape III, 1994 oil on paper, 22 x 26 inches Collection of Reid Phillips
House, Whitsett, 1999 oil on canvas, 44.5 x 52.5 inches Collection of Joy and Richard Krueger House at Damascus, 2000 oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches Daisy, 2001 oil on board, 20 x 24 inches House, South Carolina, 2001 oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches Collection of Frances McEachran Grassy Creek, 2002 oil on canvas, 20 x 25 inches Collection of Harriet and Elms Allen Katie in Yellow Dress, 2002 oil on canvas, 48 x 40 inches Grassy Creek after Storm, 2003-4 oil on canvas, 35.5 x 51.5 inches Interior with Chairs, 2005 oil on canvas, 26.5 x 20 inches
Still Life, 1994 oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches Collection of Harriet and Elms Allen
Old Field Creek Road, Summer, 2007-8 oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches
Still Life, 1994 oil on canvas, 17 x 28 inches Collection of Joy and Richard Krueger
Still Life, 2008 oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches Collection of Gib McEachran
Still Life with Oranges and Pots, 1996 oil on canvas, 35 x 44 inches Weaver Foundation Collection of UNCG Artists
Still Life with Blue Pitcher, 2010 oil on canvas, 24.5 x 20.5 inches
Katie in Red Hat, 1998 oil on paper, 25 x 25 inches Collection of Dottie Fennell
Trees, Late Winter I, 2010 pastel on paper, 18.5 x 22.5 inches
SPECIAL THANKS House at Tazewell, 2011 oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches Collection of William F. Sherrill
Harriet & Elms Allen
Joy & Richard Krueger
Adair Armfield
Lee Hansley, Lee Hansley Gallery
Sarahlee & Mark Beck
Fred B. Lopp
Grandfather Mountain Early Spring Snow 2012-13, oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches
Judy Broadhurst, Broadhurst Gallery
Marita Gilliam, Marita Gilliam Gallery Frances McEachran
Old Field Creek Road, Autumn, 2013 oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches Collection of Gary Hosey
Charles Jones, Carteret Contemporary Art Jane Cochran
Martha & Paul Michaels
Carol Douglas Jeri D’Lugin
Beach Houses, Nags Head I, 2014 pastel on paper, 18.5 x 22.5 inches
Susan J. Edwards
House at Scottsville, 2014 oil on linen, 36 x 48 inches courtesy of Carteret Contemporary Art
Rebecca Fagg
Oldest House in Hyde County I, 2014 oil on board, 25 x 29 inches
Claire Fraser, Leland Little Auctions
Oldest House in Hyde County II, 2014 oil on board, 25 x 29 inches Oldest House in Hyde County III, 2014 oil on board, 25 x 29 inches Oldest House in Hyde County IV, 2014 oil on board, 25 x 29 inches Marsh Scene I, 2014 oil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches Collection of Jane and Scott Sullivan Self-Portrait, 2014 oil on canvas, 22 x 18 inches
Yvonne & David Evans Patricia Fazzone Dottie Fennell Betsy & Edmund Gant Laura Gibson, Center for Creative Leadership Dr. & Mrs. Donald L. Hardee Pat & Slade Howell Gary Hosey Lisa & Buster Johnson Ginger & Ken Karb Thomas S. Kenan III
CATALOGUE SPONSOR
Gib McEachran Rodney Outz & Massimo Fantechi Gloria & Reid Phillips Alice Purdie Rosanne Ross Dabney & Walker Sanders Grace Sanders William F. Sherrill Louis Sherman Kay Stern Torrey Stroud, City Art Gallery Jane & Scott Sullivan Lee & Peter Swenson Christie Taylor, Hodges Taylor Art Consultancy Priscilla Taylor Weaver Foundation Collection of University of North Carolina at Greensboro Artists