Then, Now, & Looking Forward: Lorraine Fink Retrospective

by | Aug 19, 2021 | What’s Happening

On view in the Leon Family Gallery and throughout the Sandler Family Campus through September 30

Join the artist for a reception: Sunday, September 12, 1- 3 pm

Jill Grossman

“Fink does not observe nature and then paint it. Rather she is a channel through which nature itself emerges practically fully formed in its primal energy, beauty, and soul. Her drawing, mark-making, brushstrokes—all are deftly spontaneous. Fink has no intention of duplicating reality with them. Rather her marks frolic and dance from her hands with a life of their own. Of course, they suggest those things we know in our reality, but they become their own humans, animals, birds, shamans, ancestors, and family as she releases them into the world.”

—Ken Daley, Old Dominion University, Professor of Art Emeritus

Local Artist and arts supporter Lorraine Fink will be celebrated in this first retrospective of her work spanning five decades. Drawing on her interest in myths and folk tales from different cultures, Fink’s work has been influenced by her travels with late husband, Dr. H. William Fink, to Africa, Nepal and India, New Guinea, Israel, Russia, Central America, the Caribbean islands, and the Far East.

”Working with mixed media, I enjoy drawing, painting, and sculpting, which show textures of abstract and gestural energy. Playful amorphic animal and bird images leap and dance, metaphors for the human condition. Discarded objects become totems and whimsical members of a tribe,” says Fink.

Inspired by the outpouring of interest in her recent auction of drawings, the Simon Family JCC invited Fink to exhibit this retrospective, the Leon Family Gallery’s most substantial presentation to date.

Fink began her studies with Charles Sibley and Ken Daley at Old Dominion University, graduating with a BFA in 1978 and an MFA in 1983. Fink and her art have been featured on WHRO’s PBS television feature Curate, and she has been recognized with numerous honors including the Virginia Watercolor Society’s Purchase Award at the College of William & Mary, The Miniatures Juror’s Choice Award at the Hermitage Museum, and inclusion in a two-year traveling Smithsonian exhibition from the Virginia Printmakers show awarded at the Virginia Museum. Fink was invited to feature her paintings as the opening exhibit of the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).

The exhibition will run through September 30, 2021 at the Leon Family Gallery and throughout the Reba and Sam Sandler Family Campus of the Tidewater Jewish Community, 5000 Corporate Woods Drive in Virginia Beach.

 To learn more or to RSVP for the reception, contact Jill Grossman, Arts + Ideas drector, at JGrossman@ujft.org, 757-965-6137, or visit www.JewishVA.org/gallery.