Name: Jeanne Fulfs
Lives in: Palouse
Works in: Pullman as a real estate agent
Primary artist genre: Abstract landscape painting
Art background: “This is what I have always done,” said Fulfs, who grew up on a farm in Pullman. There were no artists in the family, but she was interested in making things and began taking art classes in middle school. She graduated from Washington State University with a degree in fine arts and later returned for a master’s degree in painting and drawing.
Inspiration: “The things that attract me to painting are things that you find on the Palouse -- the subtle colors, ephemeral things, things that are dusty, these marks in the soil,” Fulfs said. “I grew up in the fields and that’s in my work -- loud and clear in my work.”
The Palouse is full of a “slow, unfolding beauty,” she said. Its colors shift and blend together, even appearing as multiple colors at once.
On her technique: “I use colors, but for me, surface is more important -- how you touch the canvas,” Fulfs said. She compares the marks made in the ground by a tractor to those her brush makes on canvas.
On “slow art:” Her paintings are best viewed not in a gallery, she said, but on a wall adjacent to a window in say, a dining room, where light moves across the canvas and shifts the views. She calls her paintings “slow pieces,” which is to say they can’t be consumed in a 10-minute viewing, but are best enjoyed over time in different lights, at different angles.
On practicing her art: “I haven’t painted consistently. I’m not sure that’s my goal. I like being out. The things I like to paint are not in my backyard,” Fulfs said. “In some ways the work I do as a real estate agent allows me to get out into the world.”
IF YOU GO
What: Jeanne Fulfs art show reception When: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22 Where: Bank Left Gallery, 100 S. Bridge St., Palouse Cost: Free Of Note: Lunch is available for purchase from noon to 2 p.m.
Interview by Michelle Schmidt for Inland360
