Joy Feasley: Violets Under a Spell

Joy Feasley: Violets Under a Spell
October 20–November 22, 2017

Adams and Ollman is pleased to announce a solo exhibition with the artist Joy Feasley. Exploring painting’s potential and capacity for depth and meaning, Feasley works at the nexus of man, earth and the divine. On the precipice, often literally, between land and sky or the physical and spiritual world, Feasley transports the viewer outside of the realm of everyday experience.

Feasley’s paintings use the language of folk art and material culture; imagery inspired by the landscape and natural wonders; and references to the art historical cannon to reconnect, revisit or resurrect, arcane, but powerful ideas. The artist’s explorations lead us along a meandering path, where one may encounter obscure scientific research, occult writings, ancient belief systems that remind the viewer to explore the margins, connect to the cosmos, and acknowledge the mysteries and magic of the world. Geometry and symmetry play important roles in each composition; for Feasley, numbers may give us access to hidden secrets while colors contain subjective power and energies.

As Feasley has often done in her long career, she has looked to the sky for revelation or inspiration. For Violets Under a Spell, Feasley creates a series of new paintings, drawings and fused glass sculptures inspired by the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights. Inspired by the visionary approach to nature study of the Rosicrucian Robert Fludd and the scientific illustrator John Emsley, Feasley's focus on the celestial aspect of her landscapes has led to a more abstract and symbolic version of her idiosyncratic dream world.

In Sterno on the Fjord, Feasley depicts a series of candles swirling upward from the horizon. The candles are a symbolic early reference to the Aurora but take on a magical realism in Feasley’s painting. In another small painting on panel, etched lines radiate outward from a central point referencing black holes, as well as the Hieronymous Bosch’s painting, Ascent to Heaven.

Violets Under A Spell precedes Feaslely’s upcoming installation, Out, Out, Phosphene Candle, a collaboration with her partner and fellow gallery artist, Paul Swenbeck, which will open in early Spring 2018 at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

Joy Feasley (b. 1966, lives and works in Philadelphia, PA) studied at Massachusetts College of Art, Cooper Union, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Recent exhibitions include the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Moore College of Art, the Temple Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Vox Populi, all Philadelphia; Columbia College, Chicago, IL; LUMP Gallery and the Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, NC. Works by the artist can be found in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the West Collection. She has been in residence at the Acadia Summer Arts Program, Bar Harbor, ME and at the 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA. In 2011, she was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.