Featured Artist Audrey Kay Dowling

Artist Audrey Kay Dowling presents a portfolio of woodland images using printmaking, ceramics and mixed media. Visit her website to learn more.

 

 

I was raised in Western New York in the country with the woods, fields and creeks on fifty acres of cradling and nurturing land that instructed me in the ways and rhythms of the natural world. Those same woods, hills, fields, and creeks flow through my mind along with beautiful singing birds and flowers of all kinds.

 

 

When I was fourteen, my parents made a major job change and I moved with them to New York City for summers and school vacations. During this time, I acquainted myself with city life in the sixties by riding the subway daily to discover the art scene and all the excitement it had to offer. A few years later, I headed up the Hudson River and earned my art education degree from SUNY New Paltz.

 

 

During the next thirty years, I got married and taught school. My husband and I built our own cabin during a “back to the land” hippie moment. Eventually, we left our cabin. We established, and still run, Portage Hill Art Gallery.

 

 

With our two sons, we have camped for years throughout the United States. Every natural environment we visited has spoken to me and shown up in my work—whether through a distinct color palette or type of land mass or birds and other things that grow.

 

 

Since I made my choice to return to my country roots, I also knew that my art voice would center around that deep love, respect and appreciation for the natural world. I share the textures, lines, colors and forms I observe daily through my work.

 

 

I am still most deeply moved by my environment—mellow country living. This includes wandering our many acres of woods and gardens at the gallery house and summer living on a few acres of woods with an expansive lake view on a cliff overlooking Lake Erie. We continue to travel extensively. The birds sing me awake and lull me into sleep every day. It is quite an idyllic way to live and it impacts my daily art practice.

 

 

My block printing series contain many layers. I love using memories as well as actual subjects to draw and paint to enhance my prints. Line, color, texture, movement and form are embedded in my work.

 

 

I also work in clay, using the same nature subject matter and elements of art. Diversity intrigues me and ideas are ever flowing. As I make a new work it leads me to other choices and ways to explore my message of the peace found in nature. My goal is to encourage others to appreciate nature’s beauty.

 

 

I am blessed to be an artist!

 

 

I’m an avid consumer of artists’ biographies and frequently explore urban galleries. My art influences are varied and include the Canadian Group of Seven, Japanese woodcut printers and artists from the Impressionists right through current contemporary painters. I have successfully entered many shows, received grants and actively helped to start several local art marketing groups.

 

Artist Audrey Kay Dowling invites you to follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

 

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