Eureka museum to host ‘Art Talk’ next month
Clea Felien will present an “Art Talk” Feb. 5 at 2 p.m. at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, 636 F St., Eureka.
Felien is a professor of studio art at Sonoma State University and a visual artist whose work is predominantly paintings and drawings that combine abstraction and realism to visually represent memory and loss. In learning about Felien’s current exhibit at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, titled “Ever Giving,” visitors will also learn about ocean pollution, commerce, trade, shipping, pollution, inflation, cost of living and supply chain problems.
“I have made a 26-foot long scroll of a drawing that illustrates the information about the ocean and the effects of constant cargo container ship pollution and disruption to the oceans,” Felien said.
“I have been obsessed with cargo container ships and have painted them for 10 years,” the artist said. “I went to a 19th century French academic painting school and learned how to paint realistically at a school that trains students in the tradition of Jacques Louis David. I broke my arm and began painting with my left non-dominant hand; now I combine these styles, realism and abstraction.”
Felien uses impasto brushwork to abstract iconic concepts of reality. Her subject matter represents human memory; she uses disintegrating paint handling to represent the elusiveness of memory. The viewer is left with the abstracted remains of the subject, a memory, a simulacrum of experience. Felien’s paintings show the disintegration of visual information, emotion and ideology, illustrating the human experience as an endless regeneration of reality, rather than reality itself. The choppy brushwork she uses exposes the constructedness of the subject, simultaneously building up to realism then abstracting and unconstructing the picture. Her recent body of work is paintings of what she considers reality.
For the past six years her subject matter has been paintings of the many cargo ships that have crashed in the oceans. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply chain problems with cargo ships and trucks have inspired her.
Admission to the museum is $5 for adults; $2 for seniors (age 65 and over), military veterans and students with ID; and free for children 17 and under, families with an EBT card and valid ID and museum members.