On View
Not on viewObject number1992/3.6
Autumn Narrative
Maker
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris
(American, 1941-)
Date1984
Mediumwatercolor and colored pencil on paper
Dimensionsimage flush: 22 3/4 × 31 1/8 in. (57.8 × 79.1 cm)
frame: 30 3/4 × 38 1/2 × 1 1/4 in. (78.1 × 97.8 × 3.2 cm)
frame: 30 3/4 × 38 1/2 × 1 1/4 in. (78.1 × 97.8 × 3.2 cm)
Credit LineGift of the artist
Exhibition History"The Woman as Subject: Selections from the Permanent Collection," KIA Long Gallery (June 13 - Sept. 8, 2003).
"Fish to Fowl: Animals in Art," KIA Long Gallery (Sept. 1 - Nov. 12, 2006).
"BOO! Images of the Macabre," KIA Groos Gallery (Oct. 5, 2103 - Jan. 26, 2014).
"BOO! Images of the Macabre," Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD (August 21 - October 31, 2016).
"Surrealish: The Absurd and Unexpected," KIA Galleries 2 & 5 (June 4 - September 11, 2022)Label Text"“Anybody who looks at my work in particular should really be ready to make up their own story.”
— Eleanor Spiess-Ferris
The theatrical stage setting and a female figure being combined with a bird, specifically a swan, are recurring themes in Eleanor Spiess-Ferris’s work. She picks these elements because of their many associations they evoke —with femininity, Greek mythologies, love, purity, strength, and more. For Spiess-Ferris the swan is a metaphor for humanity, and she uses it often. Spiess-Ferris explains that all of her works are a narrative with strong ties to symbolism but that the meaning is always changing for her and that it should be changing for the viewer as well."
[from the exhibition Surrealish: The Absurd and Unexpected, 2022]
