Flagpole Magazine’s Art Notes column highlights the painting practices of incoming MFA student Christina Foard and alumna Erin McIntosh as well as local artist Paul Collins in a recent article. The three artists are featured in Gallery@HotelIndigo’s Spotlight 2017 exhibition, which offers a focused glimpse into bodies of work by the three artists and is on view through September. Both McIntosh and Foard are painters whose work tends toward the abstract and the colorful.

Christina Foard joins the School of Art this semester. She received a BFA from the University of Cincinnati in 1991 and subsequently worked in corporate communications and as an arts administrator before her recent decision to pursue her MFA. She describes her painting practice for Flagpole:

I am a process painter who bumps into content. I make continual adjustments and experiments with brushmarks. I don’t know where I’m heading when I start. Sometimes landscape paintings become figurative, and still-life paintings become underwater abstractions. I get lost for a while throughout each painting, then a form emerges and I go into a direction, often referring to memories.

Alumna Erin McIntosh received a double BFA in Art and Art Education in 2003 and an MFA with a focus on Painting in 2009 from the School of Art. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of North Georgia. Flagpole quotes McIntosh emphasizing the interplay between teaching and studio practice:

I always get ideas for working with students from firsthand accounts in the studio doing my own creative work. Conversely, teaching and attempting to verbalize different aspects of creating makes me more aware of what is happening in my own studio practice. There are many ‘aha’ moments. Each informs the other.

Read more about the two artists on Flagpole’s website.