I make murals and illustrations that use texture, pattern and color to explore relationships: shape and edges, harmony and disharmony, novelty and stability. My images arise from a drawing-based form-making language involving photography, digital collage and layer-building. I owe much to artists of the Expressionist lineage, from Kokoschka to Neel; like them, I value the irrational and the absurd, play and intuition as modes of thinking and research, and paradox and complexity over the obvious answers. I make art to understand. I make art to ask questions.
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Andrew Fearnside is a New Mexico-based artist guided by ongoing interests in psychology, social justice, pop culture and spiritual life. After completing a BFA in painting and drawing at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in his native Boston, he made paintings and performances, and found work as a designer, dancer, teacher and psychotherapist.
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In Albuquerque — where he has lived since 2001 — he has produced several permanent public murals as private commissions and through the City's public art program. His work has been featured in festivals and as temporary window displays and in exhibitions throughout Albuquerque.
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Devoted to growing community, Andrew is a Teaching Artist within the Circo Globo family, working with circus artists to provide a safe creative space for youth to explore circus arts. For many years, he has led community-based immersive installation projects through a loose collective of local artists, the Unicorn Collective. He continues to find ways to share authorship and benefits with fellow Albuquerque artists through creative projects like the Vision Zero mural, completed summer 2023 on the perimeter wall of Expo NM.
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Andrew creates award-winning books, zines and coloring books with his sister through their enterprise, Chimera Projects. Their publication O! Relentless Death! Celebrity, Loss, and Mourning received a 2019 Independent Publishers Book Award in the Independent Voice category.
photo credit: Kris Hardin