Exhibitions & Events

 Lois Walsh ~ Abstract Expressionism meets Rococo

The Falls, 2019

Working from such painters as Fragonard and Watteau is a means of inhabiting these mythic, yet palpably real worlds – idyllic Arcadian visions that seem timeless but also resonate as reminders of the transience of beauty and pleasure. The Falls, 2019, was a pivotal painting for me, (based on Fragonard’s The Isle of Love, c.1770) It is a dreamlike vision of nature forming and dissolving simultaneously on the canvas. I approached the original painting in a new manner – loading the brush with liquid paint and following the forms in the Fragonard in a fluid, loose manner. Seeing a painting I did immediately following The Falls, hung in a group show with other contemporary images of nature, I realized that there was an anxious quality in the air regarding our relationship to the natural world, a world which now seems increasingly in jeopardy. I was thinking about Pat Steir’s waterfall paintings – How interesting to allow the paint to drip and flow like waterfalls – to inhabit the processes of nature, enacting them on the canvas. It reinforced for me the idea that you can sometimes create an intriguing work when you give up some control and allow chance to operate.