The collage painting of Felicia Belair-Rigdon has evolved through a concentration on collage as media and working with handmade paper. In these works Ms Belair-Rigdon’s focus on other worldly matter s is a synergy of early childhood experiences: the Church, theater and the drama of the auction house. Bringing together disparate imagery such as sky divers, angels, bones and twigs, the surface is worked over with waxes and clay unifying the surface. The artist incorporates marbleized end papers, book pages, found pieces of wood to develop a painterly approach to paper. The viewer will appreciate most those that cast classical references through the prism of contemporary struggle. These works are shaped partly by a deep sense of time of ideas past. .
Felicia Belair-Riddon was born in Washington, DC and grew up in historic Alexandria, Virginia. Upon completion of high school, she lived in Stockhohn, Sweden and traveled extensively throughout Europe. She was a student of graphic design at Konstfackskolan, where she leaned classical drawing from plaster casts. Returning to the US, she attended Parsons School of Design and graduated from Richmond Professional Institute (a branch of William and Mary College ), now the Virginia Commonwealth University with a BFA. Graduate painting classes were taken at the Corcoran School of Art.
Her work has been shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s Hemicycle gallery, Washington, DC, The Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, The Baltimore Museum. Maryland and The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk. Virginia
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