Agnes Martin and Lenore Tawney

In the Studio is a display about the close relationship between an individual and an artwork. It connects an artist’s process of making with a viewer’s experience of looking, both based on deep concentration. Abstract art is included to highlight the complex nature of seeing.

In this opening room, works by painter Agnes Martin and weaver Lenore Tawney have been brought together.

There are several connections between Martin and Tawney’s ideas and methods of making art. In the 1950s and 1960s, they both lived in Coenties Slip, New York. The area was popular with artists and writers at the time. Martin and Tawney developed a close friendship and working relationship. Both artists made use of the basic grid structure of weaving in which vertical warp and horizontal weft threads cross over. Sharing an interest in meditation and spirituality, they created works that invite careful, thoughtful looking.

Agnes Martin’s work draws attention to the woven stretched canvas onto which she painted. She carefully drew and painted new grids onto this underlying material. Lenore Tawney also used slow, precise and repetitive methods in her art. She used linen threads and ancient techniques to create weavings by hand, rather than on a loom.