Colleen Randall (born 1952) is an American abstract painter and art educator.Donohoe, Victoria. "Young Abstract Painter at Swarthmore," ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', September 13, 1992, p. 22-M.Kane, Debbie
"Colleen Randall,"
''Art New England'', January/February, 2020. Retrieved October 18, 2022. Her work is rooted in the

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

and sublime traditions and the relationship between nature and human consciousness.Lamia, Nicholas
"Colleen Randall at The Painting Center,"
''Artcritical'', March 2005. Retrieved October 18, 2022.Craven, Robert. "Colleen Randall: The Freedom to Create," ''Art New England'', February/March 1997, p.45.McQuaid, Cate. "Spinning paint into gold in a show at HallSpace," ''The Boston Globe'', December 30, 2016. Art historian Sarah G. Powers has written, "Like seasonal and climatic shifts, Randall's work responds to nature and weather patterns through materiality and form. As meditations on the impact of sublime natural forces, her paintings transport us from the material fact of painted marks on a surface to a rich and rewarding imaginative experience."Powers, Sarah G. "Colleen Randall: In the Midst of Something Splendid,
''In the Midst of Something Splendid: Recent Paintings by Colleen Randall''
Katherine W. Hart (ed.), Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, 2020. Randall has exhibited at the National Academy of Design and The Painting Center in New York,Rosenberg, Karen
"Where Have All the Paintings Gone? To the National Academy,"
''The New York Times'', May 30, 2008. Retrieved October 18, 2022.''Abstract Art Online''. "Colleen Randall at The Painting Center," March 15, 2005. Retrieved October 18, 2022. the

Hood Museum of Art The Hood Museum of Art is owned and operated by Dartmouth College, located in Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States. The first reference to the development of an art collection at Dartmouth dates to 1772, making the collection among the o ...

,Smith, Nicola
"Painter Colleen Randall connects with the energy of abstraction,"
''Valley News'', January 29, 2020. Retrieved October 18, 2022. and Delaware Art Museum, among other venues.''Art Daily''
"Delaware Art Museum hosts community exhibition of five local painters,"
News. Retrieved October 18, 2022. She lives and works in West Lebanon, New Hampshire with her husband, poet and professor

Jeff Friedman Jeff Friedman (born 1950) is an American poet and educator.Chrusciel, Ewa. "Review of Jeff Friedman's Pretenders," ''Poetry International'', November 12, 2014.Smith, Nicola. "Images of Food and Family," ''Valley News'', March 18, 2011. He is kno ...

, and teaches at Dartmouth College.Silverstein, Hannah
"Faculty Exhibition Puts Viewer 'In the Midst of Something Splendid,'"
''Dartmouth News'', February 4, 2020. Retrieved October 18, 2022.

Education and career

Randall was born in 1952 in

Sauk Centre, Minnesota Sauk Centre is a city in Stearns County, Minnesota, Stearns County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 4,555 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Sauk Centre is part of the St. Cloud, Minnesota, St. Cloud St. Cloud metropolita ...

and was raised in suburban Minneapolis, the eldest of six children of two teachers. During childhood, the rugged natural beauty and dramatic seasonal changes of the nearby St. Croix River Valley made a strong impact on her that has remained an influence on her art. After receiving a BA in art history from Macalester College in 1975, she moved with Friedman to study painting at the University of Iowa, where she earned a BFA (1980) and was influenced by the work of abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock, Willem and

Elaine de Kooning Elaine Marie Catherine de Kooning (, née Fried; March 12, 1918 – February 1, 1989) was an Abstract Expressionist and Figurative Expressionist painter in the post-World War II era. She wrote extensively on the art of the period and was an edito ...

and Franz Kline. In the early 1980s, they moved to New York City, where Randall studied a wide range of approaches at

Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body representing more than 170 ...

(MFA, 1983) under the painters

Rosemarie Beck Rosemarie Beck (July 8, 1923 – July 15, 2003) was an American abstract expressionist, figurative expressionist painter in the post-World War II era. She was married to the writer and editor Robert Phelps. Education and early life A 1944 gr ...

Louis Finkelstein Louis Finkelstein (June 14, 1895 in Cincinnati, Ohio – 29 November 1991) was a Talmud scholar, an expert in Jewish law, and a leader of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) and Conservative Judaism. Biography Louis (Eliezer) Fin ...

, Clinton Hill and Harry Kramer.The Painting Center
Colleen Randall: Recent Paintings,"
2015. Retrieved October 18, 2022. After graduating, Randall began exhibiting professionally, appearing in group shows at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, Springfield Art Museum, and Vermont Studio Center, and featured exhibitions at Kenkeleba Gallery (1987) and the Hood Museum of Art (1989), among others.Sims, Patterson. ''Missouri Painting'', The Missouri Arts Council, 1984. That same year, she started teaching at Dartmouth College, where she served as an art professor for over thirty years and as chair of studio art at various points.Dartmouth College
Colleen Randall
Faculty. Retrieved October 18, 2022.Smith, Nicola. "Randall's Paintings Moody and Luminous", ''Valley News'', January 11, 1996. In her later career, Randall has had solo exhibitions at The Painting Center (New York),The Painting Center
Colleen Randall: Intimations,"
2012. Retrieved October 18, 2022. Spheris Gallery (New York and New Hampshire),Craven, Robert. "The Abstract Mind: Painters of the Spheris Gallery," ''Art New England'', August/September 2002. Elliot Smith Contemporary Art (St. Louis), Dartmouth,Garlitz, Robert

''Tangents'', November 2001. Retrieved October 18, 2022. and the Hood Museum of Art, among other venues.Forge, Andrew. ''Colleen Randall, New Paintings: 1999-2001'', Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, 2001.

Work and reception

Critics have described Randall's work as deeply

Romantic Romantic may refer to: Genres and eras * The Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries ** Romantic music, of that era ** Romantic poetry, of that era ** Romanticism in science, of that e ...

and connected it to the sublime tradition of abstract artists such as Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Helen Frankenthaler, and earlier landscape painters like

J. M. W. Turner Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 177519 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbulen ...

and Frederic Church. Her approach combines abstract expressionist color-field and

gestural A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or ...

techniques within a meticulous, additive process that mimics the sedimentary layering of material in nature. She lets each day's work dry, allowing the layers to build in a language of rhythm and repetition that has been described as "an archiving of temporality" in paint.Bland, Celia. "Seeing the American Sublime,
''In the Midst of Something Splendid: Recent Paintings by Colleen Randall''
Katherine W. Hart (ed.), Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, 2020. The resulting, highly textured surfaces vary from thick impastos to sculptural brushstrokes to thin veils of color. In an ''Artcritical'' review, Nicholas Lamia wrote that in spite of the dramatic weight and volume of paint, her "massive pigment load and heavy textures often become atmospheric" and impart "a feeling of spirituality despite their connections to earthly, geological activity."

Early work

Randall's early work explored connections between memories of landscape and abstraction.Magiera, Frank. "Creative Visitations," ''Worcester Telegram and Gazette'', February 3, 1992. It was characterized by her use of dark, luminous colors (redolent of the materials of pigment), large tonal masses, and textures often enhanced by mixing sawdust and marble dust into the oil paint.Davenport, Charlotte. "'Artists and Poets' Exhibit Enchanting, Wide-Reaching," ''The Vermont Standard'', October 23, 1997. In a 1992 ''Philadelphia Inquirer'' review, Victoria Donohoe wrote, "Randall's paintings are besotted with light ndthe vicissitudes of stroke and counterstroke," with surfaces that mixed buoyant transparency and buttery density, gestural drips, and thick lunges of paint recalling the work of

Hans Hofmann Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...

. According to ''Art New England'', the work in Randall's "The Freedom to Create" exhibition (

New Hampshire Institute of Art The New Hampshire Institute of Art (NHIA) was a private art school in Manchester, New Hampshire. It was accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) and the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) a ...

, 1996) gained emotional strength through its dialogue of opposites: warm versus cool; dark versus light; smooth versus rough; swirling gesture against subtly modulated fields; and complementary hues.Svedlow, Andrew Jay. ''Colleen Randall: The Freedom To Create'', Manchester, NH: Manchester Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1996.

Later work

At Dartmouth College in 2001, Randall presented paintings employing a limited palette described in a review as "musty khaki, creamed coffee and tree bark," with hints beneath of prussian blue, earthy greens, coppery blues, and greens. Robert Garlitz wrote that the rich mix of thick paint, layers of glazing, splatters, drips, and interwoven filaments suggested the tangle of bare woods in November, as well as moss, rock outcroppings, and granite; of the exhibition, he observed that the work initially appeared flat, but in concert, "created an interior light, screens or 'chambers' of dusky meditative light within the 'white cube' of the gallery … transforming the space into a chapel or meditative space (sacred)." In a 2005 review of Randall's Painting Center show, ''Artcritical'' likened a similar play of textures and color eruptions to "liquid tectonic quilts" with new layers threatening to bubble forth. Her later work has been described as more ethereal and focused on expressing states of being and the interplay of light through paint.McQuaid, Cate. "Painting is Not a Good Idea," ''The Boston Globe'', December 16, 2016.Anumolu, Mouisha
"New Hood Museum exhibit excites imaginations of viewers,"
''The Dartmouth'', February 4, 2020. Retrieved October 18, 2022. Works exhibited at Dartmouth ("Livia’s Walls", 2009) and The Painting Center (2012) were inspired by garden paintings from the ancient Roman

Villa of Livia The Villa of Livia ( la, Ad Gallinas Albas) is an ancient Roman villa at Prima Porta, north of Rome, Italy, along the Via Flaminia. It may have been part of Livia Drusilla's dowry that she brought when she married Octavian (later called the empero ...

, which she studied during a Whiting Foundation travel fellowship.Root, Nicholas
"Exhibition showcases prof's art,"
''The Dartmouth'', April 20, 2009. Retrieved October 18, 2022. Her "Intimations" and "Immanence" series (2012–6) investigated space and light, particularly a sense of inner, radiant light.''Artscope''. "Painting is Not a Good Idea at HallSpace," December 15, 2016. ''Boston Globe'' critic Cate McQuaid described ''Immanence 4'' as "a rocky impasto, earthbound save for its crepuscular colors, tangerine and periwinkle … tspaint growing thready, dissolving like spun cotton candy. Randall's 2020 exhibition, "In the Midst of Something Splendid" (Hood Museum of Art), included "Immanence" works, paintings inspired by the abundance and fertility of Colorado landscapes, and the black-and-white, acrylic "Syncope" series; the latter was named after a Catherine Clément philosophical book, which related states of rapture caused by temporary loss of consciousness (e.g., fainting) to similar effects caused by the arts. Reviews described the show's oil paintings as awash in gold, blue, and crimson color fields, with shifting textures, shades, and light that created a mesmerizing sense of motion, ranging from meditative to roiling.

Recognition

Randall has received awards from the National Academy of Design, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation. She has been awarded artist residencies by Yaddo, MacDowell,

Millay Colony for the Arts Millay Arts, formerly the Millay Colony for the Arts, is an arts community offering residency-retreats and workshops in Austerlitz, New York, and free arts programs in local public schools. Housed on the former property of feminist/activist poet ...

Virginia Center for the Creative Arts The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) is a residential artist community in Amherst, Virginia, USA. Since 1971, VCCA has offered residencies of varying lengths with flexible scheduling for international artists, writers, and composers at ...

and Landfall Trust (Newfoundland), among others.Yaddo
Visual Artists
Retrieved October 18, 2022.O'Donnell, Susannah Cassady. "American Colonial: Culture Touring New Hampshire's Merrimack Valley on the 100th Anniversary of the MacDowell Colony," ''Museum News'', September/October 1996, p. 56.

References

External links

Colleen Randall
faculty page, Dartmouth College
Focus on Faculty: Colleen Randall
Dartmouth College, 2020 {{DEFAULTSORT:Randall, Colleen 20th-century American painters 21st-century American painters American women painters Abstract painters Artists from Minnesota Queens College, City University of New York alumni University of Iowa alumni Macalester College alumni 1950 births Living people