by Gretchen Foster
Dimensions: 24″ x 30″
Media: Acrylic om canvas
For more information: 517-999-1018
Price: $500
Inspiration for Volley Ball Star
Volleyball Star is an acrylic painted on canvas. It began as an abstract.I painted the whole canvas red and then decided on an asymmetrical, three-legged form which I created using stamps and texturing materials such as sponges and scrapers. As the abstract form progressed, I liked it because it had a lot of form and variety, but i felt it lacked focus. I turned turned it sideways and upsidedown, and i made out the beginings of a face, two legs and an arm. I covered most of the red background, with shades of grey to emphesize the primary colors on the figure. I decorated the body with circles, checkered squares and flowing lines suggesting action. This is not a real volleybal player. Her skin colors are arbitrary, and her joints bend in strange ways. Numerous volleyballs fly around in a fantasy of sport. In form, she is imaginary, but in spirit, she’s real.
Artist’s Biography
Gretchen Foster has been a painter and potter for more than thirty years. She studied graduate oil painting at MSU with Raulph Henricksen and Cliff McChesney, and water-media painting with Richard O’Malley and Mark Mehaffey. She has participated in workshops conducted by Cheng Khee Chee, Kathleen Conover, Helga Flower, Jan Sitts, and Linda Baker.
She is a co-founder of the Greater Lansing Potter’s Guild and holds a PhD in English from MSU, where she taught for 15 years. Together with painter and photographer Juanita Baldwin, she founded the Lansing Area Artists’ Connection in January 2007, a group of about 35 artists who show their work at the new mid-Michigan Professional Building, Lake Lansing Rd, Lansing.
