Foreland Presents Greater Valley Artists: Fern T. Apfel

An Open Book, 30 x 30 inches, Acrylic & pen wood panel, 2025

On view: March 5th - May, 25th, 2025

Open Wed - Sun, 9am-2pm 

111 Water St. Catskill, NY, 12414

Foreland Presents, Kinderhook based artists; Fern T. Apfel. Known for her paintings with hand written text, nudging the boundaries between language, painting and abstraction, these paintings present life as an inescapable circle of time and memory. Though her works are still-life’s,  Apfel explores our naturally occurring two-dimensional plane through the social interfaces we inhabit. Mining beauty from, playing cards, real letters, old stamps, pages of diaries, pieces from well-thumbed books and memorabilia gathered over years from around the world. Often mistaken for collage, her tromp l’oile compositions push our comprehension of the tangible. The dots on a set of dominos become constellations of stars. An open notebook hints at new possibilities.

Apfel is a two-time recipient of the Individual Artists Grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a four-time recipient of a Mohawk Hudson Regional Purchase Award. In 2022, Apfel received the Yasuo Kuniyoshi Award from the Woodstock Art Association and Museum 2024, Apfel was awarded the Jane Altes Award for Artist Excellence at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, NY. Currently, Apfel has a solo exhibition, Letters Home, at Troutbeck (Amenia, MY) curated by The Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), and is included in Movement at the Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz (New Paltz, NY), and I Say: Women Artists and the Words They Use at The Hotchkiss School (Lakeville, CT).

Greater Valley Artists is a tri-monthly showcase of artists exclusively based in Greene & Columbia County. GVA is free to apply. Submissions can be emailed to Jesse@forelandcatskill.com with a subject line reading GVA Submission. Please include 8 work images, work details,  and an artist's bio.