Topaz Arts Visual Arts Program is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Roy Fowler.

On view for the first time, the four large-scale oil paintings were developed over the past two years. A mid-career painter based in New York City, Roy Fowler’s works emerge from nature. Developing a process of transferring his initial watercolor drawings, Fowler allows paint to have a life of its own in the larger canvas format, letting these “borrowed images from nature” take on new directions. In his latest series of black and white paintings, Fowler starts with a black surface, reworking paintings 3 or 4 times, allowing time and feeling to let lightness and composition emerge – giving them, as Fowler states, “a kind of memory that is embedded in the surface”.

About the Artist: Roy Fowler was born in Santa Barbara, California in 1952.  He earned a BFA from the University of California Santa Barbara in 1976 and moved to New York that year. His work first appeared in a group show at the Queens Museum of Art in 1979, and his first solo show was at the Anne Plumb Gallery in 1985.  He has continued to show in New York and abroad, most recently at the Patty Look Lewis Gallery. Recent awards include the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and Artist’s Space. His work is in public and private collections, including The Eli Broad Family Foundation, The JP Morgan Chase Collection, The Equitable Collection, and the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Currently he is on the faculty of the National Academy of Design, New York.

Fowler has created four set designs for the dancer/choreographer Molissa Fenley, appearing in her performances at the 92nd Street Y, “Regions” (1995), the Joyce Theater, “Trace” (1997), the University of Georgia, “Aquarium Trio” (2000), and again at the Joyce Theater, “Waiting for Rain” (2003) commissioned by Peter Boal for his debut performances of an evening of solo works. In conjunction with the opening exhibition, a special performance by Molissa Fenley and Dancers perform a new work “Planes in Air” with props designed by Roy Fowler.