Moody Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works on paper by Liz Ward. Silver River marks her tenth solo exhibition with the gallery and will be on view September 10 - October 22, 2022. An Open House will be held Saturday, September 10 from 1-5 pm with the Artist in attendance 3-5 pm and an Artist Talk at 4 pm.
Ward states- “In September of 2019 I was an artist-in-residence at Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior. The Park is a remote archipelago surrounded by deep, fresh water and covered by boreal forests, marshes, and bogs. At that far northern latitude, the light has an almost palpable quality. It reminded me of the 19th-century Luminist landscape paintings I have always loved. Indeed, I felt myself to be ‘in’ such a painting. Most of the works in this exhibition, many of them titled with place names from Isle Royale, resulted from that residency experience. They are also informed by my study of classical Chinese landscape painting and Tantric art.
The Daily Labors gravestone rubbings and Silver River come from my many summers in the Keweenaw in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Keweenaw, also known as the Copper Country, is formed from the same ancient geology as Isle Royale. In the 19th-century, it was the nation’s leading producer of copper. The historic gravestones in our local Pine Grove Cemetery, where I made the rubbings, record the danger and the human toll of the early mining days. Both the Keweenaw and Isle Royale are former ancestral lands of the Ojibwe people.
The outlier Strangler Fig drawing was inspired by a five-week research trip to Costa Rica in summer 2021 with Trinity University. This species (Ficus costaricana) is a parasitic tree, which relies for its propagation on birds dropping its seeds into the canopy of the tropical forest. The seed grows from the top down and then up again, using the host tree as a support, and eventually strangling it. Apart from the strange beauty of these plants, one can imagine them as metaphors for the legacy of colonialism and unbridled resource extraction in all latitudes of the Americas.”
Liz Ward (b. Lafayette, Louisiana, 1952) lives and works in San Antonio, Texas and Eagle Harbor, Michigan. She received a M.F.A. in painting from the University of Houston (1990) and a B.F.A. cum laude from the University of New Mexico (1982). Her paintings, drawings and prints are informed by natural history and the environmental crisis. Liz Ward’s work is included in the collections of The Menil Collection, Houston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; University of Houston, Sugarland Campus; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; San Antonio Museum of Art; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont; Lamar University, Beaumont; Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, amongst others. Her work has been exhibited at many of these venues as well as the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi; Galveston Arts Center; Flatbed Press, Austin; and the International Print Center, New York. Liz Ward has been recognized with a Brown Foundation Fellowship for an Artist Residency at the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France; two Mid-America Arts Alliance/NEA Fellowships, and the Dozier Travel Award from the Dallas Museum of Art. She is a Professor at Trinity University in the Department of Art and Art History since 1999 and an Environmental Studies faculty.
Moody Gallery is open Tuesday - Friday 10:30 am - 5:00 pm and Saturday 11:00 am - 5:00 pm. To make an appointment to view the exhibition, please call or email the gallery at 713-526-9911 or info@moodygallery.com. Liz Ward – Silver River can also be viewed online at www.moodygallery.com.