An art show is opening at the William Traver Gallery this Thursday May 7. The gallery is located at 110 Union Street, second floor. The show explores two brand new directions drawn from the artist's experiences living and growing up in Seattle. The urban experience is suggested with a colorful towered landscape created from cut blocks of epoxy resin. The photos of Northwest trees express his impressions of nature growing up in Seattle. The work is made of epoxy resin, photography and cut pieces of epoxy.
Traver Gallery is pleased to present new work by artist Alan Fulle. Northwest Boy will feature an exciting array of paintings from the new Photo Gem series and sculptural work from the ongoing Tower series. Born and raised in Seattle, Fulle responds to the various landscapes of the area to draw inspiration for his abstract compositions. The artist sees the Northwest split in two contrasting views; the City and Nature. He explores this dichotomy in the series that make up Northwest Boy. Bold use of color and experimentation with material are signature aspects of Fulle's technique. Always striving to develop his voice further, Fulle approaches his paintings from a startling new vantage in this latest exhibition.
In the Photo Gem series, Fulle starts with a source image of recognizable Northwest natural landscape - foliage, arching trees - to indicate the awe and grandeur that nature and growth hold. He embellishes these photographic images with dynamic abstractions, creating the sense of life and movement - an aspect that he explored in the earlier Gem Box series - in addition to the organic, natural growth captured in the image itself. The spare abstractions create alternate focus and juxtapose the vivid energy of life with the quiet of the forest.
In contrast, the Tower series focuses on the more rigid aspects of the city, the beauty in the man-made. Fulle has seen his landscape shift and change over his lifetime and as a union carpenter has participated in the construction of some of that change. He revels in the precise forms and relationships that are created as a skyline evolves, and views the relationship between the buildings as paintings in space. The Towers themselves are a response to this. While alternately capturing or reflecting light and creating dense areas of color and focus, Fulle's monumental forms bring awareness to our societies "continual drive for art and design in our visual landscape." The combination of the two bodies of work creates a synthesis between the contrasting environments that make up our landscape.
Since graduating from the University of Washington with a BFA in painting in 1989, Alan Fulle has shown his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions along the West Coast and was curator of Material Witness at the Kirkland Arts Center in 2005, an exhibition featuring 35 abstract painters from the Seattle area. Alan has shown with Traver Gallery since 2001. This is his ninth solo exhibition with the gallery.