Terry Furchgott Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1942 -

About Terry Furchgott - BIOGRAPHY

A gifted artist and a talented teacher, Terry Furchgott has made art her career and her passion for over forty years. She is currently represented by the Lisa Harris Gallery of Seattle, WA. Working primarily in acrylic and soft pastel, her paintings focus on the figure and are notable for their depth of color, strong, innovative compositions and exploration of the archetypal nature of human relationships. Furchgott received an honors degree in art history from Radcliffe College and studied classical drawing and painting at the Camden Arts Center, London. She brings a broad understanding of art history, seasoned practical experience, a continuing creative excitement and a questioning mind both to her creative process and to her work as a teacher.

Furchgott has been the recipient of Individual Artist Awards and Fellowships from the Washington State Arts Commission, the King County Arts Commission and Artist Trust. Along with her studio work she has also pursued a successful career in public art, completing large-scale commissions for the Seattle Center House, the Kent Regional Justice Center, the United States Post Office, the Regional Arts and Culture Council of Portland, the Fairbanks School District, Olympia High School and the Washington State Arts Commission among others. A community activist, Furchgott has used her talents as an artist to design and coordinate several key community projects including the Art to the People Project, a multidisciplinary arts celebration of Seattle's African Americans, the Southeast Asian Poster Project and the Garfield High School Mentoring Program

She is represented in key Northwest collections and her work can be viewed at the Microsoft Corporation, the WA Sate Arts Commission, the Seattle Center, Virginia Mason Medical Center, the UW Medical Center, Continental Bank, McDonald's Corporation, Providence Hospital, Group Health, Federal Home Loan Bank, and the United States Postal Service.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

My recent work, still very much in process, weaves together visual traditions and techniques from both ancient and modern, Eastern and Western traditions. Strongly outlined flat shapes are juxtaposed with three-dimensionally rendered forms, contemporary clothing and architecture with visual motifs from ancient civilizations, painterly brushwork with areas of stylized pattern. This clash of visual conventions surprises, and the coincident use of both arial and linear perspective creates visual tension as does the placement of equally saturated color in foreground and background. My palette is influenced by both the vibrant colors of the Fauves, and the subtler harmonies of Persian miniature painting.

The paintings take the viewer into a world of inside looking out but where nature has also invaded the interior spaces. Here the line between outside and inside, the boundaries that separate the everyday plane of existence from the world of the unconscious, of dreams, are fluid creating layers of meaning. The decorative borders add a further dimension extending the visual as well as the emotional and psychological narrative of the image. The black dog, grounded bird, fishes dead and alive, crows and doves are depicted as creatures of this material world, but also can be seen as reflections of the state of mind, the inner reality of the women in the paintings.