Layers and Depths of Color - Digital Catalog

LAYERS AND
DEPTHS OF COLOR
EVA FAYE

EVA FAYE SELECTED WORKS 2019-2023

LAYERS AND DEPTHS OF COLOR: The Art of Eva Faye
Color plays a central role in Eva Faye’s paintings, as she builds layer upon layer of paint to create
richly hued fields shot through with shadow and light. Following a decade of focusing painted
works on cut vellum that emphasized her interest in dualities of light and shadow, positive and
negative space, she recently returned to painting on canvas. In these works, Faye extrapolates
on the nature of perception, creating pools of luminescent color that are simultaneously immediate,
referential, and introspective. Drawing our eyes inward, these works resonate with imagery
and rhythm, and are replete with abstract allusions to the natural world.
Painting, for Faye, is a process of intuitive discovery. Her recent works in the series “The Paradox
of Memory” (2020-2022) and “Blue” (2023) are, she says, “a paradoxical type of memory that is
borne through intuition and physical experience.” For her, the paradox is rooted in the vagaries
of memory function—how different people remember in different ways, and how “memory in a
way sometimes also protects you.”
This paradox gives Faye space for discovery, a pathway to recognizing how memory can provide
a platform for allusion, intuition and changing perspectives. “It has to do with starting from
somewhere,” she told me, “and coming out of the works on cut vellum, I started painting layers
and incorporating the cuts back into the paintings. And I also see all the layers that I’m doing
with the different colors as some sense of memory. I recognize something that comes back to
me, and then if I feel like it looks right, then I can continue.” These layers and depths are akin
to the stories she tells herself as she is working, each layer representing a psychological state of
being. As one layer builds from the color below, each element of the field melds into a cohesive
whole.
Faye began the “Paradox of Memory” at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown. Moving full
time from New York City to her home in Bridgehampton a couple of years before, she had become
much more aware of and attached to her natural surroundings—a feeling deepened by her
“desire to take root.” As a result, The Paradox of Memory No. 3 (2020-21) and The Paradox of
Memory No. 5 (2021) reference both the structures and the colors of the earth.
At first glance The Paradox of Memory No. 06 (2021) reads like an underwater view of a pebbly
creek bed, partially illuminated and partially in shadow. Circle patterns have long been a staple
in Faye’s visual toolbox. Here it is, in her words, “a way of getting some kind of organic pattern
or breaking up the space. And that, to me, creates these fields of color and form that I’m interested
in. It’s a sensory thing for me, too, even sometimes when I close my eyes. Or you have that
moment where you see light, or you see something and there are all these circles. I make up my
own patterns, like a biomorphic natural system. I don’t feel my work is geometric in a mathematical
way. It’s more my response to organic nature. Even when I make the patterns, it’s intuitive.”

This is not to say that Faye is unconscious of what she is making and how she is doing it. On the
contrary, her working process is deeply rooted in solid formal understanding of the materials and
techniques she uses. The physicality of application of paint onto wood panels or linen primed
with rabbit skin glue are rooted in old master techniques that she brings decidedly up to date.
But it is intuitive. As she says, “There’s a lot of trial and error in my work. There is a living image
that all of a sudden exists in the painting. When I start a painting, I don’t know exactly where it’s
going to take me in the end.”
The Paradox of Memory No. 15 (2021-22) is the last of the Paradox series and the gateway into
“Blue.” In this painting Faye takes full advantage of the luminous quality inherent in this historically
highly prized pigment, sought after and revered, and the most expensive pigment ever
used, truly worth its weight—or more so—than gold. The word ultramarine derives from the
Latin ultra, meaning beyond, and mare, meaning sea, an etymological happenstance that has
meaning to Faye. “Beyond the sea could also be the sky” she said. “It could be space; it could
be part of the elements.”
Like the allusion of pebbles in a stream in The Paradox of Memory No. 06, Blue Nights (2023)
takes its narrative roots in Faye’s memories of the refractions of undulating light through water.
As intuitive as it might be in bringing a painting to fruition, the process of getting there is
a combination of accident and control: Faye works her way through a series of actions to bring
her image to life. Working flat on the floor or a table, she pours layers of thin veils of paint, using
stencils of her own making to bring images up through the skeins of paint.
Coming Through Blue (2023) is a prime example of this technique, where the white light emerging
from the blue grounds combine with imagistic patterns to create a visual penumbra. Faye’s
use of stenciled patterns varies from painting to painting, depending on the type and level of
movement she’s after. In contrast to openness and light emanating from the center of the picture
plane in Coming Through Blue, Faye created an inverse atmosphere of dense layers in New Blu
(2023).
These contrasts show the breadth of Faye’s approach to image making and her desire to create
conversations among and between her works of art. Each functions alone as a kind of tone
poem; taken together they create an overall narrative that moves from theme to theme. What
Faye has accomplished in the Paradox and Blue paintings is a series of timeless moments that
are rooted in physical, organic nature and the metaphorical space of emotion.
Terrie Sultan is the former Director of the Parrish Art Museum,
Watermill, New York and Founding Director of Art Museum Strategies.

BLUE SERIES

The Blue Hour, 2023
oil on linen
80”x 70”/ 204 x 178cm

Deep Dive, 2023
oil on linen
42”x 42” / 107 x 107cm

The Blue Beyond, 2023
oil on linen
42”x 42” / 107 x 107cm

Blue Notes, 2023
oil on canvas
30”x 30” / 76 x 76cm

Coming Through Blue, 2023
oil on wood
16” x 12”/ 41 x 31cm

Blue Nights A, 2023
oil on canvas
24” x 24” / 61 x 61cm

Blue Nights B, 2023
oil on canvas
24”x 24” / 61 x 61cm

The Other Side, 2023
oil on wood
20”x 16”/ 51 x 41cm

Blue Lit, 2023
oil on wood
20” x 16”/ 51 x 41cm

Kind of Blue, 2023
oil on wood
16” x 12”/ 41 x 31cm

New Blu, 2023
oil on wood
16” x 12” / 41 x 31cm

Blue Moon, 2023
oil on wood
12” x 12” /31 x 31cm

Twilight, 2023
oil on wood
12” x 12”/ 31 x 31cm

Rhythm in Blue, 2023
oil on linen
42”x 32”/ 106.68 x 81.28cm

OCEAN ROAD SERIES

Ocean Road No 3-6, 2019
oil on cut vellum
Each 36”x 23 1/2”/ 90 x 59cm
Quadriptych

THE PARADOX OF MEMORY

The Paradox of Memory No. 06, 2021
oil on wood
12” x 12” / 30.48 x 30.48 cm

The Paradox of Memory No. 3, 2020/21
oil on linen
20” x 17”/ 50 x 42 1⁄2cm

The Paradox of Memory No. 5, 2021
oil on linen
20” x 20”/ 50 x 50cm

The Paradox of Memory No. 12, 2021
oil on linen
32” x 28” / 81.28 x 71.12 cm

The Paradox of Memory No.15, 2021/22
oil on linen
32”x 32”/ 81.28 x 81.28 cm

The Paradox of Memory No. 8, 2021
oil on linen
20” x 20” / 50 x 50cm

The Paradox of Memory No. 6, 2020/21
oil on linen
20” x 20”/ 50 x 50cm

The Paradox of Memory No. 4, 2021
oil on linen
20” x 20”/ 50 x 50cm

The Paradox of Memory No. 9, 2021
oil on linen
28” x 25” / 70 x 621⁄2 cm

K.U.K. Trondheim, Norway, 2023/24

Eva Faye was born in Oslo, Norway. She received a BFA
at Parsons School of Design and MFA at Hunter College
in New York City. Her paintings and drawings are held in
private and public collections, among them The National
Museum in Oslo, Norway, The Norwegian Council for
the Arts, Bærum Kommune, Norway, Parrish Art Museum
in Watermill, New York and Montefiore Art Collection in
New York City. She is the recipient of several grants from
Norway, The New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship
and The American Scandinavian Society. Her work has
been exhibited in the US and in Norway. She lives and
works in Bridgehampton, New York and in New York City.
evafaye.com
Photography by Jenny Gorman