Fredericka Foster


Fredericka Foster is an American artist known for oil painting and photography.

Early life and education

Foster, a graduate of the University of Washington, was also a student and taught at the Factory of Visual Arts, a professional art school founded in Seattle as an alternative to the traditional university art education.

Career

Foster works primarily with the theme of water to raise awareness of its centrality to life; how its movement shapes the world socioeconomically, environmentally and subconsciously. An accomplished colorist using a limited palette and many layers of paint, she works "in the romantic landscape tradition of Dove, Hartley, Burchfield and O’Keeffe." Her Buddhist practice influences her work.
Solo shows include five Water Way shows at the Fischbach Gallery in New York and an exhibition at the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries. She has been in group shows in the United States and Europe, including The Flag Project for the Rubin Museum of Art opening in New York; The Christa Project: Manifesting Divine Bodies on the feminine divine, and Value of Sanctuary: Building a House Without Walls at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine; and is in many private and public collections.
Foster is also known for curating and participating in The Value of Water, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The largest exhibition to ever appear at the Cathedral, it featured over forty artists, including Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, Mark Rothko, William Kentridge, April Gornik and Bill Viola, anchoring a year long initiative by the Cathedral on our dependence upon water.
Her collaborations with non-profit organizations and scientists to educate about the water crisis include a presentation of her work to a group of two hundred and fifty scientists and a performance based on the 2017 sewage spill into Puget Sound at the Sage Assembly 2017, Exploring a Catastrophe to Water Through Science and Art; an exhibition and talk at the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries; and Like a Circle in Water, part of the Elements video series, commissioned by the Tricycle Foundation in 2014. Foster and Hilda O’Connell contributed a chapter on 15th century Italian art to Art Beyond Sight's Art Beyond Sight: A Resource Guide to Art, Creativity, and Visual Impairment, an art education book and compact disk designed to give visual experiences to people with impaired sight. A complementary video, Art Beyond Sight: A Demonstration of Practical Techniques, was co-produced with the Museum of Modern Art.

Selected bibliography