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Valerie Giles

Recent Works on Paper

November 21 – December 20, 2014

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2013
graphite and colored pencil on tinted paper
23 x 30 inches
(GILES 53)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2010
graphite and colored pencil on tinted paper
23 x 30 inches
(GILES 49)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2011
graphite and colored pencil on tinted paper
23 x 30 inches
(GILES 52)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2012
graphite and colored pencil on paper
13 x 17 inches
(GILES 41)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2012
graphite on paper
23 x 30 inches
(GILES 51)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2010
graphite and colored pencil on tinted paper
13 x 18 1/2 inches
(GILES 42)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2008
graphite, colored pencil and gouache on tinted paper
image: 15 x 11 inches
(GILES 11)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2012
graphite on paper
8 3/4 x 12 inches
​(GILES 44)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2012
graphite on paper
8 3/4 x 12 inches
​(GILES 47)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2010
graphite and colored pencil on tinted paper
23 x 30 inches
​(GILES 48)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2013
graphite, glue, and pigment on tinted paper
image: 8 x 12 inches
​(GILES 56)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2011
graphite, glue, and pigment on tinted paper
17 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches
​(GILES 57)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2010
graphite, glue, and pigment on tinted paper
13 x 19 inches
​(GILES 58)
 , Valerie Giles
 
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2011
graphite, glue, and pigment on tinted paper
image: 17 x 11 inches
​(GILES 59)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2011
graphite, glue, and pigment on tinted paper
13 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches
​(GILES 60)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2013
graphite, glue, and pigment on tinted paper
13 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches
​(GILES 61)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2013
graphite, glue, and pigment on tinted paper
12 x 17 inches
​(GILES 62)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2010
graphite, glue, and pigment on tinted paper
13 x 18 1/2 inches
​(GILES 67)
Valerie Giles, Untitled
Valerie Giles
Untitled
2012
graphite, glue, and pigment on tinted paper
10 x 8 1/2 inches
​(GILES 63)

Valerie Giles’s drawings engage us in an intimate, imagined world of assured line and fluid gesture, merging scientific inquiry and the natural world with surrealist and expressionist abstract art. Working on a subtly modulated monochromatic ground, the artist’s spontaneous skeins of curvilinear marks slide, skip and undulate across the page. Broadly based on her love of music – especially jazz – Giles transcribes its improvisation and immediacy into rhythmic, energetic lines. The work is also informed by a deep, abiding interest and study of the natural sciences. Her imagery derives from observation of nature’s processes in motion – repetition, patterns, fractals, entomology and other biological phenomena. The meticulously rendered graphite lines highlighted by bursts of color draw the viewer into Giles’s abundant visual vocabulary, oscillating between abstraction and buried allusion.

 

In certain works, Giles utilizes pigmented polyvinyl acetate to create slightly raised mounds of color. Her palette and forms are reminiscent of the '50s and its irrepressible visual culture – automobile design, bathroom and kitchen fixtures, furniture and fabric – that continues to delight and enthrall. 

 

Giles was born in New York, NY and studied zoology at the College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, ME. She also attended the University of Connecticut, with a concentration in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.