TED FAIERS The Drawing Room
THE DRAWING ROOM features 50-plus ink drawings from the late 1950s and early 60s of minimal and fluid black shapes on stark white paper byTed Faiers.They serve as a bridge to his early paintings from the 1940s and 50s and became a jumping off point for his stylized figures and scenes of the 60s and 70s.
An acclaimed modernist, Faiers created thousands of paintings, drawings, and woodcuts throughout his artistic career spent in Canada, NewYork, and Memphis. Distinctive periods mark his career’s passage through time, maintaining a clear trajectory with harmonious color, musical rhythm, and abstract form.
Referencing shapes from his Indian Space Paintings from the 1940s and 50s and experimenting with new brushstrokes, Faiers builds upon his practice to expand his abstract sensibilities and defined, flattened forms into pictorial and narrative works.Titles like “Pinched” and “Forces” add tactile elements to otherwise ambiguous works while others are prototypes for his forthcoming woodcuts of twisters and sunrises and dancing women and stoic profiles.
Maintaining his love of working with paper, Faiers pays close attention to the thin paper’s reaction to a wet brush.Thin dry paint scuffs the surface and thick viscous pigment congeals to wrinkle it. Crinkles and ridges become sculptural elements in these compositions.
Born in England in 1908 and raised in Western Canada,Ted Faiers studied at the Banff School of FineArts and the Department of Extension, University ofAlberta in Canada and at theArt Students League in NewYork. He taught at Memphis College ofArt for 30 years while leading a prolific studio practice. He completed public commissions for Memphis in May and FirstTennessee Bank and had a strong exhibition history throughout his life. His work is in a number of collections throughout NorthAmerica, including theAlbertaArt Foundation, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada;ArkansasArts Center, Little Rock; FirstTennessee Bank, Memphis;Tennessee State Museum, Nashville; Memphis Brooks Museum ofArt, Memphis; and the Canadian National Railway, Montreal, among others.
