LandEscape Art Review // Special Issue | Page 103

Gail Factor
Land scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW more for her own personal training , to develop her understanding of anatomy and the human form . If you view her oeuvre over a timeline , you can witness how this training was subtly encoded into her landscapes , both in the dynamics of shape and of color .
One of the elements that clearly separate each period of my mother ’ s career is change in her physical and emotional environment . Although her many travels were always an inspiration , her pieces were generally reflective of where she was living at the time , where she harnessed visual energy from her surroundings . For example , the calm , rolling mountainous paintings of the 1980 ’ s were created during a very serene time for her personally and in a beautiful and scenic area in northern California . In the 1990 ’ s , she made a geographic shift to the desert of Santa Fe , New Mexico ; this was concurrent with a major life change , the challenge of the emotional turmoil of her divorce . The impact is imprinted in her work - the transformation in the representation of land , her handling of shape and color .
Ms . Factor was a versatile artist and her approach reveals an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between abstraction and figurative : we would suggest to our readers to visit http :// www . gailfactor . com in order to get a synoptic view of her work . In the meanwhile , would you like to tell our readers something about the evolution of Ms . Factor ' s style ? In particular , would you shed light on her usual process and set up ?
The best approach to comprehending my mother ’ s work is linear . Seeing her pieces displayed in chronological order communicates beyond language . You can grasp her changing and evolving emotions and messages , along side her ever-developing technical abilities . Then , in the latest decade , you can perceive the culmination of her entire life ’ s work coming together .
Her completed paintings are an end result of her personal studies . There are sketchbooks full of renderings of all that caught her eye . She even had sketchbooks and a set of pencils that resided in the car . I have vivid memories of long-distance drives , my father driving and my mother sketching the mountains we passed in the southwestern United States or limning the ocean as we drove