A Durable Trace: The Art of Marilyn Lanfear

The art of Marilyn Lanfear has been part of the Art Museum of South Texas since 1998 when the Norma Kamali Wrap Blouse With Designer Label became part of the Permanent Collection. With this exhibition we are able to look at the larger body of Lanfear’s work, and to see examples from her multiple areas of investigation. The artist has never been one to continue working in any one style, or even one material. Rather she has explored widely divergent media – lead, fabric, paper, ink washes, wood, stone – and in each material she has found a three-dimensional expression for an inner idea. This wide-ranging body of work is at once similar and different. Lanfear’s work is representational and narrative, and comes out of her roots in Texas and in her family. At the same time, the pieces are conceptual, in that there is an idea, an obscured memory that is present, but not yet expressed. Lanfear is dedicated to the saving, holding, and sharing of these precious memories of the past and in re-interpreting those events and memories in new and inventive ways. One of the intriguing aspects of her work is Lanfear’s versatility and ease in moving through the various media. Never afraid of venturing into new directions, Lanfear taught herself to carve in wood, and then transferred that method into stone when she created her newest piece entitled Headstones, the cover image of this exhibition’s catalogue.

Art in Texas is as diverse as that found in other parts of the country, with abstraction, narration, and conceptual art being expressed in all media.  Lanfear claims her stake as part of the Texas art scene, as she blends her roots, her elegant style, and her vision into a distinctive personal body of work. No stranger to the world of museums and galleries, Lanfear has exhibited extensively throughout Texas and the West, in Oregon, Salt Lake City, California, and in the Northeast, in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland. The STIA exhibition presents an opportunity to view and assess Lanfear’s varied work.