Pattern Play: Artist Anoka Faruqee
October 31, 2016
Anoka Faruqeeâs psychedelic moirĂŠ paintings are at once simple and complex, deliberate and spontaneous.
Text by Allegra Muzzillo
Artist Anoka Furuqee
In Anoka Faruqeeâs childhood home in Bethesda, Maryland, pattern was an ever-present influence. âOur hallway was covered in leopard print and there were butterflies all over the bathroom walls,â she says, recalling the memory fondly. Faruqeeâs parents emigrated from Bangladesh in the 1960s, and, she says, âThey just layered their Bangladeshi embroideries and Turkish rugs on top of the already-there psychedelic patterns.â
Faruqee, a painter who now lives in New Haven, credits this early exposure for her love of color and pattern. Itâs no coincidence that she references psychedelia; her gyratory, vertiginous works seem well tethered to that aspect of 1960s counterculture. The eraâs ubiquitous abstractions and curvilinear graphics were actually influenced by much older South-Asian designs, the artist notes. âIn this sense, I come around full-circle in terms of influence.â
Her earliest worksâcompleted in the late 1990s, while she was in grad school at The Tyler School of Art at Temple ÂUniversity in Philadelphiaâwere informed by her study of pattern, particularly that found in Persian and Indian miniature paintings and Islamic textiles and ceramics. Back then, she tapped into her innate sense of discipline (a skill honed during her undergraduate studies at Yale University) to paint grid-likeâand seemingly digitizedârepeat patterns completely freehand. âIt was a very labor-intensive process,â she concedes. For example, in pieces such as Houndstooth Painting (1996) and Asterisks Painting (1999), Faruqee painted a single shape over and over, moving across the blank canvas.
By 2012, Faruqeeâs work had become moreâand, at once, lessâcomplex as she further explored systems of repetition. MoirĂŠ patterns in particular excited her. (A moirĂŠ effect is created when two patterns overlap to create a third, new pattern.) MoirĂŠs are a byâproduct of digital interference that the eye interprets and amplifies as a visual pattern.
The patterns are complex, but Faruqeeâs execution eventually became simpler; she traded in her paintbrush for a handheld tile trowel to make evenly spaced moirĂŠ striationsâa process she developed with her husband, artist David Driscoll, who sometimes helps her to maneuver the larger trowels. It was a breakthrough, she says. âBy raking through wet paint in a single gesture, I could cover the whole span of the canvas with lines.â Now, Faruqee uses an array of up to fifty customized metal trowels hat have been specially fabricated for her use. Paint is allowed to dry and gets sanded between applications, after which she lays down another color, and another, until the moirĂŠs develop an undulating, voluminous, three-dimensional quality that Faruqee amplifies simply by increasing the contrast of light and dark.
These moirĂŠ patterns might look computer generated except for occasional anomalies (âGlitches,â Faruqee calls them), such as paint slips, shaky lines, and drops of paint leaking over the sides of her canvas. Itâs this intersection of human versus machine thatâs integral to the understanding of Faruqeeâs work. These glitches give the viewer a clue as to how the work is made.
Her paintings are largely inspired by the things she observes in her daily life, such as the way light hits certain surfaces, or how it penetrates glass or water. âAs an artist, youâre always on the lookout,â she says. âYou tune yourself to be aware of odd color moments in the world to revisit later, in a painting.â
As for her method, the artist utilizes equal measures of preparation and the willingness to be surprised. Itâs âa combination of planning and not planning,â she says. She maps out new designs in Photoshop and has used the software program to create a vast color archive. The acrylic colors are usually chosen beforehandâacrylic, because its viscosity and translucency are easily controlledâbut the design and the just-so way the lines snake across her square panels is fairly unpredictable. Itâs precisely this unpredictability that excites Faruqee, along with the patternsâ and colorsâ self-generating qualities; itâs the ability to see planned combinations of colors and patterns morph into the unexpected. âTheyâre joyous paintings in many ways,â says Faruqee, âbut they also have an edge, which makes them slightly cold. And that edge is something Iâm really interested in.â â˘
editorâs note: Anoka Faruqee is represented by Koenig & Clinton, New York City, koenigandclinton.com. To see more of her work, visit anokafaruqee.com.
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