Carol Niffenegger
 
Higher Forces

- Right Combination -
 
April 1 - 30, 2011
 
Reception:

Wednesday, April 6th'2011

6-8pm

ARTIST STATEMENT

How is spirit involved with matter?  That question arose over twenty years ago when I let go of painting flowers and landscapes to explore abstraction.  Intuitively I grasped that spirit is behind the rose, behind color, behind you and me – but how and why does the invisible become visible?

My quest kept me busy, working both in a New York studio and on-location in sacred sites around the world.  Ancient cosmologies and archetypal symbols started a real alchemy within me.  I mixed acrylic paints, sand and emulsions to transform smooth canvases into textured surfaces full of forms, color and movement.  The artwork served as a metaphor to show how spiritual energies work through matter, moving it and shaping it.

Recently I turned to Goethe’s color theory to grasp his ideas about darkness and light.  What really creates the blue sky or a rainbow?  Studying Nature, Goethe intuited that color arose on a spiritual level, not as Newton said, but as an element in its own right: free-floating and qualitative.  Goethe’s research was also mine as I followed his experiments with hundreds of watercolor studies.  Measuring color with color, I started to feel the different relationships of the colors, freed from weight, radiating and creating forms and perspectives.

“Higher Forces” slowly emerged, integrating my past work with the new.  Goethe’s influence along with the insights of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science took me into long-time wonderings about the riddle of man and our shared destiny.  The mysteries of the universe, which are hinted at in this work, will come to meet you as they came to meet me: gradually, and often with surprise and wonder.  Perhaps, you, too, will be able to recognize the greater mystery of our collective becoming?

BIOGRAPHY

Born in South Haven, MI, Niffenegger received her BA with Distinction from the University of Michigan.  Niffenegger began painting in Paris under private instruction of Alfonso Arana.  With a return to the US, she moved to New York to enter a career in news and television.   By 1987 Niffenegger attended the Art Students League, studying with Bruce Dorfman and the late Richard Pousette-Dart, the National Academy and Pratt Institute in New York.  Summer studies included printing workshops at the Art Institute of Chicago/Oxbow campus in Michigan.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
Ezair Gallery, New York (2011); Holland Area Arts Council, Holland, MI (2004); Denise Bibro Fine Art Gallery, New York (2003/2000/1996/1995/1993); South Haven Center for the Arts, South Haven, MI (1999); Fairleigh Dickinson University, The Edward Williams Art Gallery, Teaneck, NJ (1998); UNESCO, Paris (1997); 112 Green Street Exhibition Space, New York (1991); The Cornerstone Gallery, Falls Village, CT (1990).

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
Michigan Governor’s Residence Artists Program, Lansing, MI (2006-2007); Denise Bibro Fine Art Gallery, New York (1992-2005); Holland Area Arts Council, Arthur Frederick’s Collection, Holland, MI (2003); Albright-Knox Art Museum, New York Collection, Buffalo, NY (2002); Exit Art Gallery, New York (2001); Holland Area Arts Council Permanent Collection Exhibition, MI (1997); Broome Street Gallery Invitational, New York (1996/1994/1991); The Annual Michigan Juried Art Exhibition Holland Arts Council, MI (1995/1994); the National Academy Museum, New York (1994); Artists of Carnegie Hall, New York (1992); Lever House Juried Invitational, New York (1991).