Two Retrospectives: Rebecca Fagg

REBECCA FAGG

Wheelbarrow, 2014, oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches, collection of Jennifer Moore

FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Rebecca Fagg’s retrospective offers a rare moment to contemplate her rigorous path of exploration, ranging from geometric forms to portraits and still lifes that quietly transport us to a place of meditative reflection. It’s a privilege to honor Fagg’s creative legacy, which spans five decades and connects on many levels to our own history at GreenHill.

This catalog captures quintessential works that illustrate Fagg’s development since the 1970s, when she began her journey as a student at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro.

Thanks to the artist’s personal engagement, scores of statewide patrons have generously loaned works from private collections to build a comprehensive survey of Fagg’s career.

Among them are leaders and philanthropists who have helped to shape GreenHill’s nearly 50-year advocacy for the visual arts. Adair Armfield, Chip Callaway, the late Susan Edwards, Kathryn & Bobbie Long, Gloria & Reid Phillips, Joan & Doug Stone, Jennifer Moore, Mary Young and so many others have shared coveted paintings with us. We are thankful for these patrons and all the art lenders acknowledged in this publication.

The Gallucci Creative Fund and Mercedes Benz of Greensboro provided vital support for Fagg’s GreenHill exhibition and a concurrent retrospective featuring Greensboro painter, Jack Stratton. We are indebted to our valued sponsors and offer particular thanks to Sally Cone and Mary Magrinat who made this publication possible with their generous contributions.

Our team at GreenHill also deserves recognition. Chief among them, Curator Edie Carpenter delivered a beautifully organized gallery installation in partnership with Rebecca Fagg and Jack Stratton. She was ably assisted by Registrar Becca Mortensen, who also designed this catalog.

We invite you to peruse the exquisite works rendered here and applaud Fagg’s lifetime of artistic excellence.

Barbara D. Richter Executive Director and CEO

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CURATOR’S INTRODUCTION Throughout her career, Rebecca Fagg has examined and registered her visual experience of the world. Two Retrospectives: Rebecca Fagg (July 16 - Nov 7, 2021) is the first detailed survey of the artist’s works. It brings together drawings, watercolors and paintings produced over a period of fifty years, as well as an early study in the round in clay. Fagg likes to work in series, “pulling the thread” and thoroughly investigating a given pictorial problem.

The artist’s uncompromising approach to representation peels away subjective filters to reveal creases in the kernel of objects. As she explores a given theme, her compositions often grow in complexity. The viewer is led to understand them not only in terms of Fagg’s technical prowess in transcribing empirical reality, but as distillations of experience that allow us to see the visible in a new way.

Figure drawings and still lifes are the earliest of 114 works on view. “Figure Study Betty”, (1976) in the collection Self-portrait, 1979, pencil on paper, 13 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches of the North Carolina Museum of Art, highlights Fagg’s use of continuous linear contours to render the subject. The overall composition describes a rectangle framed by the cushions of the couch.

The non-classical pose, foreshortening of the model’s right arm, and clothing lend a contemporary sensibility to the image as does the placement of the subject in so close to the viewer her knee appears to graze the picture plane. Fagg’s oil paintings of “Emilie Sitting” (2010) executed three decades later, present her friend with legs tucked Figure Study, Betty, 1976, pencil on architect’s tracing paper, 19 x 22 inches, collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art under or draped over an armchair in a similar casual pose.

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“Three Onions” (1971) was created while Fagg was still a student in the BFA program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is the earliest work in the survey. The artist would produce numerous compositions in watercolor over the next decade, exhibiting them at SECCA, GreenHill Gallery, and the Collectors Gallery of the North Carolina Museum of Art. “Still Life with Glass” (1977) reveals Fagg developing her ability to capture effects of light and shadow. Critic Patricia Kreps singled out Fagg’s watercolors Three Onions, 1971, watercolor, 5 3/8 x 8 inches, collection of Eunice Pinckney in her review of the 1976 Art on Paper exhibition at the Weatherspoon Museum for “values registered so sensitively that even a glass bowl casts an image of itself in the shiny surface of the tabletop below.” Passages, such as stripes and patterns cast on an expanse of white tablecloth by a light source passing through delicately tinted glassware, anticipate the artist’s later paintings of light effects in architectural settings.

During this period, Fagg also worked in landscape. A series of large landscapes of the mountains near the Pisgah National Forest and Blue Ridge Parkway was produced in Asheville after receiving a grant from the NC Department of Cultural Resources. She hosted plein-air painting excursions to her family property in Stokes County, attended by Ben Berns, Henry and Philip Link, Richard Fennell, Andrew Martin and other artists. These landscapes are unromanticized views of the stark beauty of red earth and mountain formations of the land around Danbury. The artist also took frequent trips to work in New York, that afforded an introduction to the city art scene as well as an opportunity to paint upstate.

Fagg’s proficiency with oil technique is evident in the meticulously rendered web of tree branches in “Nederland in March” (1989), painted after a trip to Europe. The attention to composition in the winter scene is telling.

The flat Dutch countryside is divided into zones of fields, triangular houses, and a tree lined road with a brushy Rebecca in Danbury working on Spot’s Field #2, 1981

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bank. Dark fence posts like steppingstones lead our eye to the background and the waiting town. Moving from watercolor to the medium of oil paint offered the means of obtaining saturated color, and Fagg’s investigations led to a new body of work that would result in over 108 paintings of colorful boxes. These ranged from as large as 38 x 52 inches and as small as 12 x 12 inches in size. Paintings from the box series were exhibited in New York at the O.K. Harris Gallery and in a show in Nagoya, Japan. These works reinforced the artist’s approach to composition in which “any thinking” is completed in advance of touching brush to paper or canvas, and once layers of transparent color are laid in no Nederlands in March, 1989, oil on paper, 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches changes are made to the overall design. Stages of this process included the creation of models from a collection of found boxes. Boxes were selected for size, volume, contrasting linings and mat or reflective surfaces. Certain boxes were painted in desired colors before being arranged, lit, and a preliminary scale drawing was created. The geometric arrangements required exacting perspective drawing, so precise that looking at them from the right or left eye could shift them in space. “Boxes on Shelves #2” (1991) depicts the studio set-up in detail, with particular attention to how rectangular forms are transformed by the laws of perspective, cast shadows and surface reflections.

The box paintings are faithful renderings of existing visual situations, yet formal imperatives within each work lend them to be read as purely abstract compositions. In “Red Boxes #2” (1988) boxes of the same hue fill the picture plane evoking the voids and volumes of monochromatic relief sculpture. Primary colors and balanced asymmetry employed in “Scattered Boxes #4” (1991) evoke Bauhaus compositions.

Floor-to-ceiling mirrors in Fagg’s downtown Greensboro Untitled Yellow Box, 1990, oil on paper, 10 1/2 x 9 3/4 inches, collection of Massimo Fantechi and Rodney Ouzts

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studio allowed her to create “mirrored” box paintings that present versions of the same studio set-up from different angles. The complex “Square Series, Blue #2” (1994), in which multiple perspectives create cascading rectangular forms caught in mid-fall, appears to be effortlessly realized.

“Untitled Yellow Box” (1990) also uses the edges of the picture plane to suggest boxes are zigzagging forward into the viewer’s space. This impetus is set in motion by light casting the shadow of a blue box top onto the central yellow box. The rendering of this shadow is a ravishing piece of painting. Fagg employs the device of directing the viewer’s eye using cast shadows to great effect in her subsequent series. “Dark Interior with Light #1” (1996) and “Light Fragment #1”(1997) created the following year, mark the beginning of a new series of oil paintings treating interiors, many of which depict the artist’s home. In contrast to the Light Fragment Study #2, 1997, oil on paper, 15 x 12 inches studio lighting in the box series, natural light filtering into the house through windows is the animating force in these works. The warm, golden light in “Dark Interior with Light #1” evokes 17th century Dutch paintings, yet the scene is pared down to a single shard of light that turns the corner of a doorway and illuminates the border of a woven rug on the wooden floor. The curved edge of a shadow against the bright wall is echoed on the waxed floor below as its shape suggests that of a musical instrument whose neck continues in a beam of light cast on the floor. “Light Fragment #1”(1997) is the first of several depictions of century-old windows in the artist’s house in which the window becomes a stage for the play of light among folds of translucent curtains. The quiet “Hallway Late Afternoon” (1999) and other views of multiple rooms seen through doorways, explore the transformation of these spaces by natural light at specific times of day.

Layers of thinly applied paint depict instants when a zone of dappled radiance moves across a wall, or shadows dance across a checkered floor into the room beyond as in “Blue and Green Chairs”, (2001). In paintings such as “Bellemy Mansion” (2003) the chairs in lieu of people populate rooms and evoke a sense of presence as well as absence. Portraiture enters relatively late in Fagg’s oeuvre and is closely related to her longtime interest in treating the figure in architectural settings.

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In 2007 and 2008 Fagg did a group of portraits of friend’s daughters including the pensive “Annie” (2008). The sitter is facing the artist, and her face is lit on one half by sunlight from a window where an opening in the graceful curve of a curtain appears to call her away from her thoughts. “Lila” (2007) is the first and largest painting in this group. The pared down composition in square format, places the sitter at the center of line of light and shadow that bisects the painting along the diagonal. Lila’s head is presented in profile while her body, dressed in a plain dark shirt evoking a dancer’s leotard, is in ¾ view. Her hair is pulled back, emphasizing the pure oval of her head and brow, lending her an aura of poise and containment. Strong light entering from the right both activates and seals the stasis of the moment and highlights the artist’s virtuoso handling of individual strands of hair. “Mirror” (2007) is one of five self-portraits, including the two early drawings by Fagg in the exhibition. Fagg’s composition, like that of “Lila”, concentrates on how light affects our vision of the sitter and her surroundings. It appears to ignite her short hair from the back, and when returned by the mirror, wash the scene in warm incandescent tones. The visible frame of the mirror, subject’s spectacles, and potted begonias that figure in several paintings, surround the artist with tools of her trade. The large “Papers” (2010) also portrays the artist in a work setting. She leans over with a pile of papers on a drafting table placed before a distinctive green wall that serves as the background to many major works as the corner of one of the papers in the artist’s hand catches the edge of a ray of light. Fagg’s small “Self Portrait” (2007) created the same year engages with the subject of middle-age directly and without faltering. Fagg has produced landscapes interspersed with her other series, taking on a project when she was struck by the beauty of a particular site. “Latham Park” (2012) is one of several landscapes that treat the ethereal effects of fog, as trees at the end of a meandering creak bed meld into the humid grey mist. Landscapes figure among some of Fagg’s most spectacular Annie, 2008, oil on canvas on panel, 14 x 14 inches, collection of Mary and Jim Young

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works. Many paintings portray trees with as much detail as portraits, such as “Crepe Myrtles” (2002). Crepe myrtles also figure in the small painting “Wheelbarrow” (2012), where the design of their shadows are slightly displaced by boards composing the wall of a garage. Fagg also periodically creates works documenting various animals and their habitats, observed through webcams embedded in nature. In “Belugas #2” (2018), the mammals’ white forms are painted with minute gradations of pigment as they float into focus and then move on. Fagg has stated that an unachieved Latham Park in Fog, 2012, oil on paper, 7 3/4 x 10 inches, collection of Qwen Pinckney goal has been to paint the experience of what can be seen in the dark. Many works in the exhibition present objects, such as a white picket fence on a country road at dusk, that sit at the limit of the visible. Fagg’s tautly crafted works transmit the quietude and concentration of the processes by which they were made. Seen together they constitute a remarkable achievement. Her newest paintings will propose a return to the figure, and we hope to lend them our full attention.

Edie Carpenter Director, Curatorial and Artistic Programs

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Eggs and Toilet Paper, 1973 watercolor 6 3/4 x 8 inches

Egg Study, 1976 watercolor 8 1/2 x 12 inches collection of Huston Paschal 10

Figure Drawing #76-01, 1976 pencil on tracing vellum 10 3/4 x 7 1/2 inches

Study of Betty, 1977 pencil on paper 16 x 13 inches collection of Diane Laslie

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Still Life with Glass, 1977 watercolor 18 x 24 inches collection of Lisa Anderson and Dudley Anderson

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Glass on Blue Cloth, 1982 watercolor 9 1/2 x 8 inches collection of Pam and David Sprinkle

Still Life, 1980 oil on paper 20 1/2 x 16 inches private collection

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Danbury, Toward The Three Sisters, 1981 oil on paper 17 x 14 13/4 inches collection of Susan Myers

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Eastern N.C., 1987 oil on canvas 14 1/4 x 18 1/2 inches private collection

Blue Ridge in Fog, 1996 oil on canvas on masonite 28 x 38 1/5 inches private collection

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Boxes on Shelves #2, 1991 oil on paper 13 x 11 inches collection of Rascha and Robert Kriegsman

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Scattered Boxes #4, 1991 oil on paper 20 x 15 inches collection of Wanda and Tom Huey

Square Series, Blue #2, 1994 oil on paper 20 x 20 inches private collection

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Visitation #3, 1994 oil on canvas on panel 27 x 33 inches collection of Weatherspoon Art Museum

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Light Fragment #1, 1977 oil on linen 36 x 48 inches collection of Susan Lautemann

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Dark Interior with Light #1, 1996 oil on masonite 24 x 24 inches collection of Mary and Gus Magrinat

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Hallway, Late Afternoon, 1999 oil on paper 13 3/4 x 21 inches private collection

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Interiors, 2000 oil on linen 38 x 52 inches private collection

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Susan’s Desk, 2000 oil on paper 16 x 19 inches collection of Betty Watson

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Late Afternoon View, 2000 oil on linen 36 x 52 inches private collection

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Parlor Chair, Afternoon #2, 2000 oil on paper 25 x 17 1/2 inches collection of Noel and Tom Kirby-Smith

Blue and Green Chairs, 2001 oil on paper 23 1/2 x 16 inches

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Crepe Myrtles, 2002 oil on linen 40 x 40 inches collection of WEAVERCOOKE

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Cape Breton Shore, 2003 oil on linen canvas 49 x 34 inches collection of Charles Pinckney

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Curtain Morning, 2003 oil on linen 40 x 40 inches private collection

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Bellemy Mansion, 2003 oil on linen 34 x 34 inches private collection

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Black Balsam, 2007 oil on canvas on panel 18 x 18 inches

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Lila, 2007 oil on canvas on panel 19 1/4 x 19 1/4 inches collection of Kate and Lee Cummings 31

Mirror, 2007 oil on paper 10 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches

Sam, 2009 oil on canvas on panel 14 x 17 1/2 inches collection of Dan Heck 32

Emilie Sitting #1, 2010 oil on canvas on masonite 16 x 16 inches private collection

Emilie Sitting #2, 2010 oil on canvas on masonite 16 x 16 inches private collection

Katherine, 2008 oil on canvas on panel 11 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches collection of Emilie Gottsegen

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Papers, 2010 oil on canvas on panel 24 x 24 inches

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Paper Bags #4, 2012 oil on panel 9 x 12 inches private collection

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Water Lilies, Fall #3, 2006 oil on paper 9 x 6 inches collection of Charlotte Chatlain 36

Joe’s Fork #1, 2007 oil on canvas on panel 14 x 14 inches collection of Chip Callaway

Brooks River #1, 2014 oil on wood panel 9 x 12 inches

Brooks River #2, 2014 oil on wood panel 9 x 12 inches

Naknek Lake, 2020 pencil on paper 11 1/4 x 20 inches

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Belugas #2, 2018 oil on paper 7 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches collection of Charlotte Chatlain

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LENDERS Lisa Anderson Dudley Anderson Karen Alexander Adair Armfield Ann Borden and John Fisher Leslie and Bruce Caldwell Chip Callaway Edie Carpenter Charlotte Chatlain Betty and Benjamin Cone, Jr. Kate and Lee Cummings Massimo Fantechi and Rodney Ouzts Estate of Susan J. Edwards Rebecca Fagg Diane and Chuck Flynt Alyssa Gabbay Emilie Gottsegen

Laura Deane Gresham Jennifer Moore Jane Gutsell Judy Morton Julie and Weston Hatfield Huston Paschal Lydia Hatfield Eunice and Charles Pinckney Dan Heck Qwen Pinckney Joan and Bill Hemphill Gloria and Reid Phillips Wanda and Tom Huey Kathy S. Robinson Noel and Tom Kirby-Smith Pam and David Sprinkle Susan Kirby-Smith David L. Staub Margaret Kowalski and George Schneider Joan and Doug Stone Rascha and Robert Kriegsman Priscilla P. Taylor Diane Laslie Sarah Warmath Susan Lautemann Betty Watson Elizabeth and Henry Link WEAVERCOOKE Kathryn and Bobbie Long Weaver Foundation Collection of Mary and Gus Magrinat UNCG Artists Ann May Weatherspoon Art Museum Mary and Jim Young

ABOUT GREENHILL CENTER FOR NORTH CAROLINA ART GreenHill engages a diverse community of artists, adults and children through dynamic statewide exhibitions and educational programs while providing a platform for exploration and investment in art.

As a gateway to North Carolina’s creative community, GreenHill is the only organization dedicated exclusively to presenting and promoting the contemporary visual art and artists of NC. Inspired by a vision of cultural equity and inclusion, GreenHill’s wide-ranging initiatives build empathy and connection through expressive, innovative and thought-provoking art. For more information, visit www.GreenHillNC.org.

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This catalog accompanies the REBECCA FAGG + JACK STRATTON: TWO RETROSPECTIVES exhibition at GreenHill Center for North Carolina Art in Greensboro, July 16 - November 7, 2021.

Sales inquiries welcome in person and by phone. Contact Edie Carpenter at 336–333–7460 ext 2 or by email at Edie.Carpenter@GreenHillNC.org REBECCA FAGG + JACK STRATTON: TWO RETROSPECTIVES is organized by GreenHill Center for North Carolina Art in partnership with Rebecca Fagg and Jack Stratton and curated by Edie Carpenter. The exhibition is supported

by The Gallucci Creative Fund and Mercedes Benz of Greensboro. Sally Cone and Mary Magrinat sponsored the retrospectives catalogs.

Mercedes-Benz of Greensboro GreenHill extends special thanks to donors, board leaders and statewide members for their enduring commitment.

All artwork © the Artist © 2021 GreenHill All rights reserved. This publication is protected by copyright.

No part of this publication may be repoduced 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.

Photography and Photo Editing by Rebecca Fagg Cover and Book Design: Becca Mortensen, Curatorial Assistant & Registrar, GreenHill GreenHill 200 North Davie Street, Box No.4 Greensboro, NC 27401 www.greenhillnc.org (336) 333-7460

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