August 12 - September 28, 2003
Reception, Saturday, August 23, 2 p.m.
Keith Fondren's paintings are unique. After casting "marbleized" sheets of acrylic paint on the floor, he begins to create a layered work using small pieces cut from the intricately colored dried sheets. Shapes may be recognizable or abstract and revealed or hidden in very thick layering. In Opulence one can find stylized snakes.
While working, Keith tries to turn himself over to a higher power. He says of his work, "I try to find the spirit in myself and let it work." He wants his art to provide the viewer with the "opportunity to find one's self." These works offer that chance of discovery.
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Albert Sperath, Director
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Paintings
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Opulence
Artist's Statement:
I am an abstract expressionist. I eat, think, and sleep painting. I use oils, enamels, acrylics, chalk, and spray paint, packing a great amount of detail into each brightly colored canvas.
My work draws on my spiritual self-study. The paintings are my way of defining who I am. They are about devotion, meditation, reincarnation, and karma; I am a dedicated individual whose art presents excellence, maturity, and originality. I seek to express the mystical and magnificent configuration of divinity and mysteries of creation through form, volume, shape, motion, space, sound, pattern, colors, historical events and miracles.
My strong ideas are well targeted and executed so they are dramatic, memorable, persuasive, and invoke thought. As an artist I have found sensitivity and the ability to bring from to the formless and life to the lifeless.
Keith Fondren, a native of Batesville, Mississippi, studied at the Center for Creative Studies of Art and Design at Wayne State University in Detroit. He now resides on his parent’s 300-acre farm in Batesville.