MaggieTennesen
® Photo by Martin Cox

Maggie Lowe Tennesen is a southern California native whose paintings and drawings have appeared in

numerous exhibitions, including those at Stone Rose Gallery, Warshaw Gallery, Jancar Gallery, Cirrus

Gallery, RBStevenson Gallery, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Her work has been reviewed in Art in America and the Los Angeles Times, and was published in the Winter

2005 edition of New American Painters. She holds a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts and an

MFA from California State University, Long Beach.

She was the recipient of art residencies at GilsfjordurArts in Iceland, at Silpakorn University in Bangkok,

Thailand, as part of an art exchange between Thailand and California, and at the XIX International Art

Colony in Kriva Palanka, Macedonia.

She is represented by RBStevenson Gallery in La Jolla and Saltfineart.com in Laguna Beach.

Art Residencies:

  • GilsfjordurArts, Iceland
  • Silpakorn University Bangkok, Thailand as part of an art exchange between Thailand and California
  • Kriva Palanka, Macedonia as part of an art fellowship, the XIX International Art Colony, St. Joakim Osogovski.

Education

  • BFA at CalArts 
  • MFA at California State University at Long Beach. 

Artist Statement

My work derives its imagery from the accumulation of strands or veins that recall the weft and warp of

existence. Time, space, and color are part of the material of this fabric.

They grew from previous work that articulated aerial images of urban grids and windows of meditation.

The desert landscape where I now live has worked itself into the imagery. Stratified rocks near Joshua Tree

National Park have replaced the urban settings. The work is based on the powerful forces that have built

this landscape, its layers and layers created over vast periods of time by rock, sand, and color–in places

worn by desert flash floods, jumbled by earthquake faults, and modified by animals both large and small.

The dense population of lines in my work reflects an inner environment as well. Waves emerge in heaped

up strings of consciousness, form, feelings, habits, and thoughts. Muscles, bones, energies, emotions, and

color stir mysterious energies . Forms seemingly arise from nowhere, come into being, gaining mass and

momentum, and then dissipate. They accumulate, gather, and strengthen, bit by bit, to form interlocking

patterns.

These pieces are inspired by meditative practice and the natural environment, and here these influences

have coalesced and taken shape in ways that are wild and unexpected, as in the world inside and outside

all of us.