Selected Collections
Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block, Tucson, Arizona
Julie Sasse, chief curator
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Andrew Young
American, born 1962 Tigress, 1991 egg tempera on wood panel 23 x 22.5 inches Gift of Steven Berkowitz |
Many of the egg tempera panels from the first decade of my work contain geometries that serve as thresholds between different sensory worlds. Be they purely patterned or derived in form from familiar objects – furniture, vessels, and other intimate objects – they all seem to push paint and image into heightened contrasts. Egg tempera is a luminous medium, comprised of multiple translucent layers, but it also can present a very physical and tactile surface. In the piece, Tigress, from 1991, I built up the paint in such a way that it appears to form natural fissures, creating a sculptural quality against the dark circle which represents passage and transcendence. As the circle throughout history has implied unity, infinity, and perfection, so is the magical center or “window” of Tigress an invitation to a sublime experience. The white circle – off-center, but attached and relating to the larger – gives a suggestion of something planetary and gravitational, even moon-like. Symbolically, Tigress is the feminine power in mythology, and the white circle, individual and contrasting, is the eternal soul.
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Tigress was included in the Tucson Museum of Art exhibition The Circle Game.
With Tigress in 2002 at a TMA New Acquisitions exhibition, honored to be next to a Jasper Johns print.