Artist of the Month May 2018

Lynn Foskett

Tarpon Springs, FL

Lynn Foskett was born in 1949, in south Florida. Raised and educated in the South, Mid-West and Northeast, Foskett received a strong background in the visual arts in junior college with a focus in Fashion Illustration. After art studies in Florence, Italy, she worked in the graphic arts and design field, assisted a regionally acclaimed artist on a commissioned piece, and found her early expression in painting the varied bird life of the south. Foskett went on to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from Northern Illinois University. Work and family kept Foskett’s painting practice simmering on the back burner for several years. Since 2000,  Foskett has been actively growing her art practice in a semi-abstract style, working as a volunteer and leader in several of the arts organizations in the Tampa Bay FL community, as well as acting as a judge for variety of art organizations’ shows. Foskett is an active member of the Professional Association of Visual Artists (PAVA) and of the Florida Artists Group (FLAG). Her work has been garnering recognition as she participates in many area  and statewide shows. In January 2018, Foskett completed a successful solo show, her second, and is now preparing new work for upcoming exhibitions.

How and when did you start creating art?

I recall drawings and doing art activities on my own around age 5 and 6 and, for all practical purposes, never stopped. Growing up, art classes were part of the regular curriculum in schools in those days and I remember various projects from that experience. At home, I was copying  an art course ad images (of animals and faces) that were in Life Magazine, the ones that were titled, “If you can draw this, you may have talent!.” While I never tried answering those ads, consistently drawing those images provided me with a basic understanding of form and proportion. Living near Chicago at the time, there were always field trips through my school or with friends or family, to the significant art and science institutions of the city. It is at the Chicago Art Institute that I received an epiphany when I came upon an early mixed media, Cubist piece by George Braque and realized, then,  what art could be. By high school I was in the art club, making sets for plays, and doing illustrations for student publications. While in college in Boston, I was able to soak up its vibrant cultural offerings, as well as those in neighboring New York City.  After working a couple of years in the illustration field, and painting,  I went back to school to complete my BFA in painting and re-immerse myself in the Chicago art scene, where I had received my epiphany so many years earlier.

What media and genres do you work in?

Currently, I work with oil and cold wax medium, often incorporating collage and mixed media. I also create shaped pieces out of luaun, a thin, veneered plywood. For many years I worked with oil pastel on Yupo, a synthetic paper. My tendency is to use traditional mediums in an untraditional manner; my work tends towards semi-abstraction and non-objective approaches.

Who or what are your influences?

My inspirations have been many, found in both the natural and man made worlds. in the last several years, my influences have been Henri Matisse, Richard Artschwager (his drawings, primarily, and sculpture), Agnes Martin, and sculptor, Fred Sandback. It is their focus on positive and negative space and the quality of line that is a powerful influence on my thought processes. I am also inspired  by the juxtaposition of disparate objects and the highly textured qualities in the work by many of today’s artists. On a philosophical level, I am intrigued by the underlying, invisible structure of the visible world. What I think I see or understand and the reality beneath it are often two different things; perception is, at best, imprecise.  Whether visual or emotional, our interpretations of our world, seen and unseen, are equally deceptive, formed by our environment, including physical parameters, knowledge and experiences, or lack thereof. My work reflects a continuing curiosity in exploring the dichotomy between perception and reality, and the resulting ambiguities.

What was your inspiration for Stacked?

"Stacked" came about over a period of time as I was considering a transition from my Linear Perspective series. The theme of the latter was the exploration of positive and negative space and how objects may be integrated into that space. I used the simple, but often elegant, lines of common utility objects drawn in a reductive technique to explore those concepts. A few of the objects used were chairs, step stools and the like (I can trace back my interest in chairs to paintings from my college years). I wanted to continue the line work I was doing, but take the chair out of the background and let it speak for itself. In “Stacked,” each of the chairs was drawn separately (working with layers of oil pastel and scratching through that to create the line) and then integrated together. I like the basic geometry of chairs and how that shapes a chair’s positive and negative space. Chairs, also, are a metaphor for the various issues being explored. As an object, it is not only ubiquitous but intimate - after all, most of a chair’s parts are named after the parts of the human body.; it both shapes the space it sits in and how we feel when we sit in it. Just as we identify and design chairs by their particular purposes, they can also be defined by the people who use them. The empty chair can symbolize both loss and receptivity, of those who have left us and those yet to come. Chairs have stories.

Describe your creative process?

I have my rituals which usually entail journaling or reading relevant materials first thing, and a warm-up routine which includes sketching or working up a couple of small oil and cold wax medium pieces.   It is important for me to have several different pieces in play, which allow me to move different projects forward, but also lets me move from one piece to another if I happen to be stuck in some way. When I am “in the zone,” the process moves very quickly, but at other times a piece needs to be put away for awhile. After a rest, I can often see what it needs to move forward successfully. I use layering, whether with collage, stencils, or color; shaped or layered substrates; and mark-making with any conceivable tool to create a visual interpretation of the concerns that interest me. While I may do a couple preliminary sketches of an idea, it is the combination of the aforementioned materials and tools that will largely determine how the completed piece looks. I like the surprises that often occur with this approach and, so, it is not unusual for the end result to be quite different from what had been originally conceived. Ultimately, I consider the process of making artwork to be an active dialogue between the artist and her or his  muse.

What are you working on currently?

I have several pieces en process, each for different projects I wish to participate in this year and into 2019. Two works use the chair as the main image, as I continue to grow that body of work. Shaped luaun is the support for one, upon which Yupo, a synthetic paper, is adhered; I am working with powdered graphite to develop the image on its surface. The second is an oil and cold wax medium and collage piece on cradled panel. Images of a step stool, in various open and closed positions, are being developed for a piece similar to the concept of "Stacked." As part of my involvement in a county-wide outreach program, I will be writing a weekly blog and creating two pieces of artwork that will reflect the program’s theme, "Act II: Aging in Place". In one piece, I am using the cyanotype technique to develop my images, while the second piece is a sculpture using found or readymade objects for its construction. In betwixt and between, there are other themes that I am exploring that have come out of my warm-up rituals.

What are your near/long term goals as an artist?

Showing up every day and doing the work, expanding my expertise with relevant workshops and other opportunities will move me towards my near/long term goals. In the short term, I am continuing to network and putting my work out into the Tampa Bay Area, greater Florida and the southeast region. My long term goal is to have my work accepted in national exhibitions, and to build up my collector base. Whatever comes to pass, it is doing the work that is my passion - I realized a long time ago that I cannot do otherwise.

Where can people view/purchase your work (gallery, website, etc)?

My work, and contact information, may be viewed on my website: www.lynnfoskett.com. I actively post images on Instagram: @lynnfoskettartist and on Facebook: www.facebook.com/lynnfoskettartist