MaggieTennesen
® Photo by Martin Cox

Maggie Lowe Tennesen is a southern California native whose paintings and drawings have appeared in numerous exhibitions including: Stone Rose Gallery, Warschaw Gallery, Jancar Gallery, Cirrus Art Gallery, R.B. Stevenson Gallery, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Her work has been reviewed in Art in America and the LA Times. Her work was also published in New American Painters, the Winter 2005 edition.

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 and space and color are part of the material of this fabric.

These paintings grew from previous work which articulated aerial images of urban grids and windows of meditation.

The desert landscape has worked itself into the imagery. Stratified rocks near Joshua Tree National Park have replaced the urban settings. The newer work is based on the powerful forces that have built this landscape, its layers and layers created over vast periods of time by rock and sand and color…in places worn by desert flash floods and elsewhere jumbled by earthquake faults.

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 are also present. They seemingly arise from nowhere, come into being, gaining mass and momentum, and, then, dissipate. They accumulate, gather and strengthen, bit by bit to form energy waves or particles.

This imagery is inspired by meditative practice and the natural environment, and these influences have coalesced in profound ways.