Fred Stonehouse came to Shark’s Ink. in July of 2019 to make three new lithographs, The Comedy of Oblivion, The Clairvoyant’s Dream and The Echo of Luck.
The artist describes this project:
“I have a long history of exploring the possibilities of animal and naturalist imagery to fabulist ends. These works serve as allegory, political commentary, imaginative world building, or psychological metaphor. We project human traits onto animals in our art, in our literature and in our folklore. In the west, for example, dogs represent loyalty, lions=bravery, owls=wisdom, the fox=cunning, etc. While I am keenly aware of traditional associations with certain animals, those in my work are deployed to more personally specific ends and are really no more than thinly disguised surrogates for the psychological conditions of the self.”
Stonehouse has been the recipient of an NEA Arts Midwest Grant and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Individual Artists Grant. He is currently an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Wisconsin.
His work in in the collections of the Spencer Art Museum, the San Jose Art Museum, the Chazen Museum of Art, The Block Museum, The Milwaukee Art Museum, the Haggarty Museum of Art and numerous others.
