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FAITH LOWELL
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1922, Faith McNaughton Lowell and her family lived in several midwestern communities during her youth, including Duluth. Following high school graduation, Faith attended commercial art school in Chicago where she frequently visited the Chicago Art Institute to study the paintings, especially those of George Inness and Winslow Homer. She next studied at Wheaton College and began illustrating nursery books and church school materials.
In 1946, Faith married John Lowell of Hastings, MN. The couple returned to St. Paul where they raised five daughters. During the years of mothering a young family, Faith continued to work at home illustrating children's books and workbooks for Scripture Press. Her passion and talent for painting emerged through the years and, in 1964, Faith discontinued her career as an illustrator and began to exhibit her paintings. Today one of Faith's daughters, Patricia, exhibits her mother's work in her River Falls, Wisconsin frame shop. Faith also shows her work at Tamarack Gallery in Stillwater and Art Resources Galleries in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Faith paints in a home-based studio overlooking several acres of open land. She gathers inspiration for her paintings on daily walks there and through nearby Battle Creek Park. Frequent visits to the North Shore also provide ideas . Faith works in oils from her own photographs and sketches. Her home and studio are alive with the works of many of her favorite artists.
Artist's Statement:
My aim in painting is to combine abstract design which is necessary to lasting visual satisfaction and the natural forms of nature, hoping to give others some of the pleasure and excitement I continually experience in landscape. I enjoy the wild and semi-wild landscapes of northern Minnesota and the hills and fields of our own area. My daughter's farm in western Wisconsin is a delight of hills, trees, fields and sky. I have a need to be in the landscape and feel it as well as look at it. We have camped, backpacked, hiked and canoed in the Boundary Waters area and elsewhere. I have a sort of ache for what is over the hill and around the bend. Those who buy my paintings, large or small, are very important people to me. I feel that they have a bit of my life and are somehow "related".
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