MARY ANN FLYNN-FOUSE
The splashy gestural coloramas of Mary Ann Flynn-Fouse are in a painterly style
often referred to as abstract expressionism. Whatever the monicker given these
moving paint, shape, textural dramas they are immediate and self contained, limiting
their dynamic appeal to their reality as paintings and minimizing any reference
to natural phenomena seen or recalled from somewhere beyond the limits of the
paintings. There is a powerful visual excitement in each individual painting (diptychs
or triptychs) that depends for its hypnotic appeal on the gestures of the brush
strokes, the hue, value, intensity of the colors, the broad range of textures,
the sizes, positions, proportions and “movements” of the shapes.
These brilliant works are based on feeling (emotion) rather than idea (concept).
Undoubtedly some viewers will try to “read into” these works some sort of personal
experiential meaning as in Rorschach blots, but it is certain that that was not
the motivation of the creating artist, Mary Ann Flynn-Fouse.