artists

FAN LEE WARREN
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Warren’s newest mixed media work provides a moving look into the African-American experience. Her lifelong fascination with visual references to African-American history, slave life, and colonization are evident within these recent series. She enhances the historical allusions by administering a unique procedure in which she physically “ages” the work surface using earth, fire, and herbs before applying an itermix of paints, pastels, and charcoal.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Warren earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute in 1985 and a BFA from Illinois State University in 1982. She has been exhibiting her sculptures, drawings/paintings, and installations for 20 years. According to art historian Constance Cortez, Warren’s pictorial fragmentation can be linked to Robert Rauschenberg’s work and her use of symbols relates to traditions of representation established by Betye Saar. She has received various grants and awards including an Oakland Creative Artist Fellowship Grant; National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the California Arts Council (Artist in Residence Grant); and Astraea Foundation Visual Artist Award. The artist continues to teach painting and art history at Laney College in Oakland, California.