George Billis Gallery is pleased to present Anne Seidman: Way Finding - the gallery’s sixth solo exhibition of the artist’s work. The exhibition features Seidman’s most recent body of abstract drawings and paintings and continues through November 25th.
In the new series, Seidman uses modular units of blocks, triangulated shapes and line to construct an evolving organic form. The form is built one unit at a time while the artist simultaneously keeps her eye on the growing whole composition.
Using color pencil, tape with text, water-based paint, and even Sharpie, Seidman writes of her process: “Each time I draw or place a unit I do so with an unblinking consideration for how it will associate with pieces already firmly planted. The chunks of cut and pieced together type are used to suggest energy, an underlying support and the sound of babble.”
During Seidman’s process of building these forms, a single unit might be nudged up, then over or perhaps added to an already exaggerated and stretched out column. Other times a unit placed too far out, practically teetering, appears to be testing gravity and its consequences. Ultimately all forms are steadied by forms elsewhere in the plane. Contiguous form and unexpected color relationships are some of the recurring themes that create abstract narratives in the work.
Anne Seidman received her BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Phila., PA, in 1972 and her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, in 1976. Siedman has exhibited throughout the US and been reviewed in Art in America, artNews, Huffington Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. Seidman is the recipient of an 18th Street Art Center residency (Santa Monica, CA), a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for painting, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for painting, a Philadelphia Museum of Art Purchase Award from Works on Paper, and a Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts. After many years in Philadelphia, Seidman moved to the West Coast and now lives and works in Los Angeles.