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Constance E. Fowler

American, 1907-1996


Details
Names

Constance E. Fowler

Fowler, Constance E.

Born

International Falls 1907

Active

Oregon

Died

Oregon City 1996

Occupation or Type

painter

printmaker

Northwest artist

Oregon artist

Bio

In 1923 the Fowler family moved to Pullman, Washington so that Constance and her younger sister, Margaret, could attend Washington State College (now Washington State University). Later, after a year at the University of Washington in Seattle, she moved with her family to California and then to a farm outside of Salem, Oregon, where she taught art privately. In 1935 she was hired to teach at Willamette University, where she rescued the art department and remained as chair until 1947. Fowler taught at Albion College in Michigan from 1947 to 1966. She also taught summer classes at Central Washington State College in 1949 and 1950. She was the recipient of three Carnegie Scholarships at the University of Oregon during the summers between 1936 and 1938.

Fowler's painted designs on lampshades brought her favorable attention in the Salem area. She exhibited woodblock prints of Twenty Landmarks In and Around Salem at the 1939 New York World's Fair. These were later published in a book entitled, The Old Days: in and Near Salem. The original woodblocks for these prints are in the collection of the Oregon Historical Society.

Constance Fowler was a well-recognized artist on the Northwest scene from 1936 to 1946. Her work was shown in major West Coast exhibitions and her canvases were acquired for collections throughout the Pacific Northwest. At that time Fowler's landscapes exhibited a subtle sense of color harmony and textural quality. A feeling of movement was evident through her expressive application of thick layers of paint. An article by Roger Hull in Artifact (November/December 1996) states, "she was rightly recognized as an artist genuinely expressive of the mood and poetry of the Northwest. More than most others, she sensed and expressed the turbulence and darkness of nature, as well." Fowler found the post-war art trends a challenge. She spent the latter part of her career experimenting with abstract, non-representational painting while continuing to implement the expressionism of her earlier works. She retired in 1965 and moved to Seal Rock, Oregon, where the ocean continued to inspire the abstract images she produced and exhibited there. Her papers are housed at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University.

Artist biography reproduced with permission from the authors, Oregon Painters: the First Hundred Years (1859-1959), Ginny Allen and Jody Klevit.

Gender

Female

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