Visual Arts 2007
Homer
A lifelong Alaskan, Asia Freeman paints landscapes inspired by Alaska’s volatile coastal weather. The Boochever Fellowship encouraged her to move farther into herself and the inner territory of imagination and discovery. Asia’s recent body of work examines vast, ethereal, invented landscapes. Islands rise like mirages from mist-shrouded shorelines, light bursts through translucent layers of color to create a mysterious sense of place. Layering the surface with thin glazes and by exploring the tension between the solidity of paint and the instability of form in fleeting light, Asia Freeman strives to produce paintings that hover between pure abstraction and natural realism. Asia co-founded Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska, showing innovative contemporary art of all forms since 1992. She has taught art for University of Alaska since 1997. Asia has been written about extensively in Alaskan newspapers and in Icebreakers: Alaska’s Most Innovative Artists, published in 1999 by Julie Decker. Asia Freeman has exhibited in multiple solo and group formats annually since 1991. A life-long Alaskan, she graduated from Yale College in 1991 and received an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 1997.