Folium

From early in her career, Nancy Graves was intrigued with the direct connections between art and nature. Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, she grew up visiting the Berkshire Museum, where her father worked. The mixture of art and natural history collections the museum housed was a major influence on Graves, whose art encompasses natural history and paleontology.

After receiving a degree in English from Vassar College, she was awarded a second undergraduate degree and a MFA degree from Yale University. Her body of work is diverse, ranging from life-size polyurethane and burlap camels, large-scale bones made of wax, and drawings inspired by Paleolithic cave art and lunar maps, to a series of works based on camouflage, as well as energetic color displays. She abstracts natural phenomena, repeatedly challenging the viewer to examine art in relation to reality. Graves does not replicate nature, but investigates the ways physical objects are perceived and how they may be conceptualized.

Folium, the geological term for a thin stratum of metamorphic rock, parallels the many layers of Graves’ artistic career embedded in this painting. Initially the images appear to be nonrepresentational, but on closer inspection, shapes, patterns, and references to the artist’s past work emerge. The brown forms in the center represent a piece of her own sculpture made of bone formations; the positioning of the object anchors the composition, much like the piece itself served as a foundation for the artist’s later work. She suggests additional bones through loosely connected black dashes and dots. The primary-hued circles and mauve and turquoise animal patterns recall her earlier Camouflage series, while the broad energetic swirls of color refer to the artist’s study of Hurricane Camille. Through her use of shape, line, and color, Graves has created a vibrant multilayered design incorporating, in a single composition, many different stages of her work.