Date: Fri 15-Aug-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: SHIRLE

Quick Words:

Browning-Walsh-Fairfield-art

Full Text:

(Colleen Browning in Fairfield Univ retrospective, 8/15/97)

An Artist's Eye For The Illusions Of Reality

(with cut)

FAIRFIELD - Reality and illusion dance playfully together in the works of

celebrated American artist Colleen Browning. A master of the hidden paradox,

Browning's talent for transforming the mundane into the magical has never been

more apparent than in the traveling exhibition, "Colleen Browning: A

Retrospective."

The show, which chronicles five decades in the life of the award-winning

artist, will be on view at the Thomas J. Walsh Art Gallery in the Quick Center

for the Arts on the campus of Fairfield University, from Thursday, September

4, until Saturday, October 22. Viewing hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am to

5 pm, and Sunday, noon to 4 pm.

Over 54 works will be on display in the exhibit. Paintings borrowed from the

Harmon-Meeks Gallery in Naples, Fla., will be complemented by others from the

permanent collections of the Columbia Museum of the Arts in South Carolina,

the Butler Institute of American Art, the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art,

the Kennedy Galleries and private collections form Wisconsin and New York.

Gallery visitors are sure to marvel at Browning's canvases, which enchant with

their lush and swirling lines of colors. Solitary figures are often interwoven

into contexts of patterns and subpatterns that appear and disappear. Her

interest in the human condition erupts in fantastical metaphors.

"Crossing" eerily captures the fragile security of an umbrella in a torrential

downpour, echoing the aching loneliness of city life. "Question Mark," which

depicts surreal people hurtling through congested subway cars, would make a

claustrophobic shudder.

Few images are grim, however. Browning is actually adept at bringing to light

much of this world's hidden beauty, whether it be subtly as in "Battle

Action," and abstract of an inner city youth, or boldly in paintings such as

the Eden-like "Under the Flamboyant," with its idealized marriage of humankind

and the environment.

"I am very lucky to be an artist," said Ms Browning. "I can make windows into

a transformed world and the magic that can occasionally inform it. I hope that

these images can sometimes touch on universal archetypes.

"I want there to be an understanding between viewer and artist, and that the

viewer will be able to tune in to what made me so enthusiastic about painting

each picture."

Browning's paintings have appeared at the Whitney Biennial and Carnegie

International Exhibitions, Mexico City's Biennial Interamericana, the National

Academy of Design and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, among

others.

Her work has been acclaimed in Newsweek and Time magazines. She has won

numerous awards including the Adolph and Clara Obrig Prize, the Ida Wells

Stroud Award, the National Academy of Design Purchase Award, and the

Pollock-Krasner Fellowship Grant, to name a few.