Me & My Art Monday: Meet Chris Fowler

By September 15, 2014 Me & My Art

This week’s featured artist:  Chris Fowler, member since 2012:

Chris FowlerME:  My development as an artist has been a somewhat circuitous path. I started out as a graphic artist, quite literally spending my childhood drawing. I then became interested in making animated films. From that I shifted to live action films (this was the golden age of Super-8 home movie film). It was from filmmaking that I developed an interest in, and a focus on, cinematography, and the catalyst was a relatively minor early 1970’s Ingmar Bergman film called “The Touch”. In college, I saw a print of Edward Steichen’s early 20th century photograph of New York’s Flatiron Building, which, in one form or another, has been on my wall ever since. And the rest, as they say, is history. Currently, I live in Point of Rocks, MD.

Bittersweet in Winter

Bittersweet in Winter

MY ART:  Although the Flatiron Building picture has been the “ghost” I’ve been chasing and trying to emulate since college, it’s also Georgia O’Keefe’s remark suggesting that the abstract qualities of even naturalistic images are what appeal to us that guides my approach to photography. It’s not the subject itself so much that appeals to me as the interplay of the lines, colors, textures, planes, etc., that I wish to capture and convey.   The pictured example is the piece I’m offering for Collector’s Choice this year.

MFA & ME:  It’s surprising to recognize I’m only just now finishing my second full year as a an MFA member—can I really have come to feel so close a bond with so many people in such a short time? I had been showing my work in Frederick for a number of years and was encouraged to investigate one of the other galleries in Annapolis. While my wife and I were in town, we also just happened to stop in to the Circle Gallery, and as both of us recognized, what was on the walls was actually significantly closer to the kind of work I do (the “American Landscapes” show—which, ironically, I still have yet to get into). The sense of friendship and camaraderie, of mutual support and interest in each other’s work—that we aren’t looking cautiously over our shoulders at each other—has been particularly striking and welcome. It makes me at least want to do whatever I can to help the organization prosper.

 

Spread the word about…YOU:   Every week, we feature an MFA member for “Me & My Art Monday.” If you would like to be featured, please submit a photo and three paragraphs: one each about YOU, YOUR ART, and MFA & YOU totaling approximately 350 words, to meandmyart@mdfedart.org.

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