Heroines: Audrey Flack’s Transcendent Drawings and Prints, 2015
April 13–June 5
Heroines: Audrey Flack’s Transcendent Drawings and Prints.
Heroines is the first ever exhibition of a remarkable suite of drawings and mixed media prints by Audrey Flack, one of the pre-eminent artists of our age. Flack, a pioneer of photorealism, is a nationally recognized painter, printmaker, and public sculptor.
Audrey Flack is Lafayette’s 2015 Richard A. and Rissa W. Grossman Visiting Artist and will be on campus April 15 to 17, during which she will be meeting with students and giving a public lecture followed by a reception.
Audrey Flack will give a public lecture about her work and career, Thursday, April 16, 4 p.m., Williams Center for the Arts room 108. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will be followed by a reception for the artist.
Flack created a group of charcoal and pastel portraits in 2011 that combine her ability to draw in the style of an Old Master (Mistress) with references to modern culture. Most of these works feature women from history and mythology who have been transformed from victims into modern heroines.
In 2013 the artist began a residency at Lafayette’s Experimental Printmaking Institute, EPI, under the direction of Curlee Raven Holton. The drawings were scanned by EPI’s Master Printer Jase Clark, who, under the artist’s direction, manipulated the files and output digital pigment prints on rag paper. Flack then added multiple layers of serigraph details to St. Teresa and Cupcake Angel resulting in the limited print editions, Ecstasy of St. Teresa and Une Bouchee d’Amour (above).
The artist also reworked by hand digital pigment prints of seven drawings, adding layers of dynamic gestural drawing, vibrant colors, and sometimes glitter and collage elements to create powerful, unique works she calls “Transcendent Drawings.” Her images become female icons for the modern age and explore emotions that define us as human beings.
An illustrated catalogue with foreword by director of The Hyde Collection Art Museum Charles A. Guerin and essay by Lafayette art historian Robert S. Mattison will be available. Exhibition curators are Mattison and Director of Lafayette Art Galleries Michiko Okaya.
A selection of the works from the Lafayette exhibition will be shown at The Hyde Collection Art Museum & Historic House, Glens Falls, N.Y., September 26, 2015 to January 3, 2016.
The Grossman Artist-in-Residence and Exhibition Series was established by Richard A. Grossman, a 1964 graduate of Lafayette College, and his wife, Rissa W., to provide opportunities for intensive interaction between students and major twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists. The series also supports the presentation of significant exhibitions.