Fan Lee Warren, a contemporary black artist, is a testament to the enduring power of art. For over three decades, she has tirelessly explored the impact of the past on the present and future, delving into various perceptions of African American culture, its historical construct, and its effect on contemporary society.
Her artistic voice, deeply personal and emotionally charged, resonates through the composition of visual narratives. Each fragment is a poignant symbol or a snapshot of a current event, serving as a mirror to personal, racial, and ancestral memories.
Warren often ritualistically stresses her paper's surface using fire, earth, and cooking herbs to convey history. Her overlapping, collaged images of children, adults, and symbols are drawn and painted using a mixture of acrylics, watercolors, inks, pastels, and charcoal.
She employs the ancient universal spiral, a symbol of timeless movement and flow, to convey the weight of history and its impacts on present society. She believes that the ring’s transformative pattern connects to ancestral memories, each spiral loop bringing one back to the same place.
