Laurie Fendrich

Laurie Fendrich, I Met a Boy Called Frank Mills, oil on canvas, 36" x 32", 2009. Laurie Fendrich (born 1948) is an American artist, writer and educator based in New York City, best known for geometric abstract paintings that balance playfulness and sophistication. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, a retrospective at the Williamson Gallery at Scripps College (2010), and group shows at MoMA PS1, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Academy of Design, among many venues. She has received reviews in publications including The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Arts Magazine, ARTnews Partisan Review, and New York Magazine. Fendrich has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (2016), Brown Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2009, 2017), and National Endowment for the Arts (1983–4).

Fendrich's art has been described as a "deft blending of mid-twentieth century Cubism and biomorphism" Critic Hilton Kramer characterized her work as "devoid of solemnity, dogmatism and existential angst," with an undercurrent of humor that embraces the worldly as it renegotiates the relationship between abstraction and representation in modernist painting. Fendrich notes her inclination toward a Platonic, "modernist, optimistic spirit that strives for the eternal and universal." as it seeks a "fusion of rationality and emotion, order and ardor,"

Laurie Fendrich, My Own Dolly, oil on canvas, 40" x 34", 2018.

Painting In her early work, Fendrich created large abstractions dominated by triangular forms and tonal contrast, seeking, in her words, to "make the most eye-grabbing, dynamic painting … while not sacrificing harmony and balance." Since that time, her vocabulary of interlocking, jigsaw–puzzle shapes orbiting complex, off-kilter compositions has remained fairly consistent.

Critics such as Karen Wilkin identify color as a defining aspect of Fendrich's work, describing her palette as inventive, "a little off," Her eccentric, biomorphic shapes—which just barely suggest eyes, noses, cartoon profiles, pots and other worldly things—add levity and wit through their "familial" interactions and allusions.

Drawing Fendrich began creating black-and-white Conté crayon works in the 1990s, inspired by a show of Seurat drawings. Works in their own right rather than studies for paintings, the drawings have been exhibited in four solo shows. Since then, she has regularly contributed to The Chronicle and for five years was a blogger for "Brainstorm", the Chronicle'''s blog site that ran from 2007-2012. In addition, she has contributed essays and reviews to The Common Review. Her topics range from the role of art and artists in society, abstraction in contemporary art, art education, art criticism, and individual artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Anselm Kiefer. She also contributed an essay on the philosophy of painting to an anthology in honor of the political philosopher Thomas L. Pangle. She has written exhibition catalogue essays for artists including Judith Geichman, Don Gummer and Doug Hilson.

Teaching Fendrich has taught painting, drawing and contemporary art theory for more than four decades, emphasizing foundational skills and often drawing on her philosophy background. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Art Institute, Colorado State University, and Irish Arts Council, among many others.