Artist Aimée Farnet Siegel’s work is driven by her love of materials, colors and forms, the way those things interact and change one another, and the way that each piece tells a story that in its abstraction is both beautiful and open to viewer interpretation.
“I construct, deconstruct and reconstruct,” said Siegel of the organic process of discovery that mirrors her life journey. “I keep seeing new things, new possibilities. I do a lot of experimenting and that keeps the work alive.”
The daughter of an architect father and a mother whose creative talents included decorating, gardening and fashion, she used her father’s markers to draw as a child, majored in graphic arts at LSU and started her own graphic arts business. The structure of that applied art gave her a foundation for combining words and images. When she turned to fine art, the formality of her previous métier gave way to a fluid use of those same elements. Print, typeface and photos are embedded in many of her works. Like vivid color they are part of Siegel’s visual vernacular and give what she calls “solidity” to the pieces. At the same time, the liberated way Siegel uses them creates mystery rather than a defined message.
“So much is in the not knowing,” said Siegel. “The mystery lets the viewer decide for themselves.”
Siegel works in a variety of mediums — paint on canvas or board, line drawings on paper, delicate quasi-grids of ripped paper; collages combining paint, paper, line, lettering, language, fabric, photographs, photocopies and other found and gifted items that she keeps. She works in both small and large, monochromatic and colorful and two and three dimensions.
“When I began experimenting with gluing paper together with no substrate, I noticed that the glued-together paper looked like a tablecloth or fabric which led to my free-floating three-dimensional paper works,” she said.
The works differ widely. A piece made with strips of black painted paper on birch board is reminiscent of a patchwork of tape. Another titled “Perfect Form” has a primitive patched-together human shape. In other works, the lattice patterns and patchwork recede to the background with exuberant color, swirling lines, waterfalls of paint and surreal or cubist-inspired shapes at the fore.
Fierceness, authenticity, self-understanding and personal connections are guideposts. During the pandemic, Siegel found an irreplaceable source of the latter when a workshop she was scheduled to teach at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts pivoted to Zoom classes and developed into a lasting network of friendship and inspiration.
“I am a storyteller,” said Siegel. “And art is like people. Everyone has a story and not just one.”
