Artist Statement:

"For me, it's all about the process. I see a thing, an object, an image, and there's something intriguing about it. It's got to relate to something else though, so I collect a bunch of stuff, then put things together. Maybe they're disparate, maybe not so unrelated. In three dimensions it becomes assemblage; in two, it's collage. I then work the surface to create the impression of age, of a kind of surface history that's a metaphor, the suggestion that the surface has been through a rigorous experience, yet the imagery is surfacing. Mark making is one of the most alluring things about the drawing and painting process, and although I'm a good draftsman I'm mostly not as interested in depicting reality as I am in suggesting some facet of it in a kind of ambiguous or mysterious way. In this work I add, subtract, layer, scratch, sand, gouge, paint, erase, layer some more, glaze, cut, sew, and generally have some fun with the surface until I get where I want to be with the image."

About Abbie Read:

Abbie Read received a B.A. in Studio Art and Art History from Oberlin College in 1978, followed later by a M.F.A. in Mixed Media from the School of Art at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In between she taught painting, printmaking and drawing at Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts. Following the pursuit of yet another degree, this time in Landscape Design, she and her husband Bart relocated to mid-coast Maine where her 10-year-old landscape gardening business, ARTgarden, is thriving. During the winter months she returns to the studio.