Nancy Genn

“Genn's large and substantial paper pieces intrigue our senses, we feel a kind of presence or "thisness" (concreteness) that a piece of sculpture would elicit, while at the same time a sense of color, spatial field and image usually associated with painting. She creates these pieces using what has been called the "'Genn Method" of building layers and tearing strips of still wet paper, allowing the material to speak directly, while underlining and embodying her concepts. The titles of her pieces suggest what she is after and why she succeeds; Saratoga, Marshlands, Limefield, all are landscapes or places and bring to mind the intense beauty of field, sky and earth. How rich, dense and different is the light reflected to our eye from actual soil, rocks or plants compared with the light from a thin layer of paint on canvas; it is this quality of quiet, saturated light that meets our eye when we observe a Genn paper piece, and they have the same restorative effect on the viewer as a walk in the country. 

“Her geometric concerns as seen in the work also have geographical or geological implications: I am reminded of farming country viewed from the air, or cross-sections of geological strata with her central line running like a fissure or fault-line across the image.”

– From Doubleleaf by Archana Horsting, 1983