Adam Fowler Drawing in Layers

First let me thank you for taking the time to interview me. I’ve always felt that being an artist is a slow evolution, that we constantly refine our thinking and processes. I had always been interested in drawing as it is one of the most direct and immediate forms of expression. I started drawing with gestural lines while I was in college and have been refining my process while keeping to the original idea of gesture. I was making these drawings with line after line, they were getting denser and darker and over time I got to the point where I couldn’t go any further. Around the time I started to feel frustration in my work I came across an artist’s work that was cut paper and brought that process to my work. Making the layers of gestural lines more delineated gave me a tremendous amount of freedom and the work has been developing ever since. My work is a culmination of very fast gestural or automatic line drawings in graphite, the removal of the negative space in the line drawings and then layering. The work ranges anywhere from two layers to as many as eighty-eight layers.

One of the biggest challenges in my work is keeping it fresh, while I think it’s extremely important to focus deeply on something over a long period of time it can also be challenging to keep it interesting and relevant.

I’m very interested in the idea that my drawings can be seen as sculpture and vice-versa. It’s human to want to categorize ourselves but often to the detriment of artwork, so I feel like I’m succeeding somehow when my work doesn’t exactly fit in one place.

I usually think of my work as gestural and what I think you are referring to as chaotic I see completely differently. What I have been thinking about lately is the idea of duality in my work, particularly duality of process, which can at times feel overwhelming, but I think in person they lean toward meditative.

The relationship that artists have with their galleries is incredibly important. There needs to be support from both artist and gallery and an open dialogue. When they have an honest respect and trust for each other, both do well. I think that collaboration may be the wrong word because the artist should have complete conceptual and aesthetic control of their work but at the same time we as artists need to understand that galleries need to sell work to stay open.

I love music but I don’t listen to one specific genre. I recently had the opportunity to get to know Richard Chartier through a project and have been introduced to a whole new world of music and I am very grateful for that.

I’ve been increasingly interested in modern design, specifically from Scandinavia. I live in New York and one of my favorite things to do is make the rounds of high end galleries/stores that focus on vintage modern furniture. One of my favorite designers is Hans Wegner who spent his career refining the chair and what it meant to sit. Another Scandinavian designer who has become important to me is Jens Quistgaard who primarily focused his attention to tableware and kitchenware.

I just finished work for a solo exhibition I’ll be having with Margaret Thatcher Projects in New York that opens in late March (2013), the show is titled “Escaping Forward” and consists of two separate series of drawings and one large scale installation. The installation will be the first of its kind for me and will be 10 feet long by 3 feet high; it will be made out of 41 individual sheets of paper.