Alan Loehle

Alan Loehle

Fellow: Awarded 2007
Field of Study: Fine Arts

Competition: US & Canada

Oglethorpe University

Alan Loehle received an M.F.A. in painting from the University of Arizona in 1979. He now lives and works in Atlanta and is an Associate Professor of Art at Oglethorpe University. In addition to his Guggenheim Fellowship for Painting, he has received grants for painting from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Elizabeth Foundation, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, and a Fellowship in Painting from The National Endowment for the Arts.

 Mr. Loehle has exhibited his work widely since 1983. Recent exhibitions include Year-07 Art Projects at County Hall, London, and Flow, in Miami, Florida; his drawing are currently in the Artists’ Registry at the Drawing Center in New York. Museum exhibitions include the Weatherspoon Museum, Arkansas Arts Center, Polk Museum of Art, Mint Museum of Art, Montgomery Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. His drawings were featured in a print exhibition of drawings in The Paris Review in 1999, and his work is in the collections of the Arkansas Arts Center, Polk Museum of Art, MOCA GA, and the Reading Museum.

ABOUT THE WORK

During my fellowship I went to Rome with the intent of developing ideas for new work. While there I decided to delve into the layers of history, to chronicle the dilemma of what it means to be human. My work took a dramatic change of direction as a result. The new paintings juxtapose cultural symbols, images from everyday life, art history, and myriad other sources through a process of cognitive free association- the Belvedere Torso, Venus of Willendorf, carcasses of meat, Adam and Eve, the Devil and an angel from Mexican folklore- all jostle for space together. The overriding concern in each is with addressing the human condition. The paintings are meant to create an echo chamber of associations and connections for the viewer- for the self and other, now and the past, our hopes and fears. They are an attempt to make sense of experience, to capture the bigness of being alive in the world, to somehow tickle the back corners of the viewer’s mind and spirit. Each in its own way is an attempt to distill the world and get everything organized in one place. I wanted these paintings to acknowledge both tragedy and beauty.

 

A review of Alan Loehle’s “Rome Series,” a recent exhibition at Marcia Wood Gallery. The Rome Series focuses on work Mr. Loehle completed during his 2007 Fellowship in Fine Arts.

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