Artwork copyright Violet Fields. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2017.

Green Peace, 1990

Violet Fields
(American, born 1951)

Location: Edgerton Elementary, Puyallup

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Artist Violet Fields created the energetic and gestural artwork Green Peace through a spontaneous layering of different colors and materials. She notes, "each stroke, line, paint, and smear affects the whole just as our acts affect the whole of our environment. Green Peace is a balance of line, shape, and color that enfolds and invites the viewer into a world, teaming with safe, peaceful possibility."

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Puyallup School District.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Violet Fields is an artist and a poet who is African American. Her artworks are personal reflections. They are abstracted compositions of irregular geometric shapes and lines in pale, pastel, “sandstone colors.” She uses layers of colored pencils and pastels on top of paint. Her artworks have subtle textures such as folded and creased papers and canvases. She notes, “As a person of color in this country, I share with others a tradition, if not a natural affinity, for communication with higher sources… Art that is true can only be made by those who can ‘hear.’”

Fields was born and raised in Berkeley, California. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and her Master of Arts degree in studio art from California State University in Sacramento. She has taught art at the middle school level in Oakland, California, and is involved in arts advocacy. Fields has shown extensively in the Bay Area.