UMVA Showcase – Summer 2025: Martha Fergusson, Marjorie Arnett, Ruth Sylmor

Martha Fergusson

Nature, with its vast and expansive beauty, speaks to me. As a landscape painter, I spend a lot of time observing and sketching the world around me. With this series, Deep Water Horizon Encounters, I investigate my perceptions of our fragile environment and the impact of human encounters in the natural world. Drawing and sketching in nature helps me to visually comprehend these encounters and contemplate the complexities of interconnected natural systems.

My impressions of the ecological disaster of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are reflected in these paintings. I began my research by studying images of the oil spill taken from satellites. I was surprised to discover that beauty could be found within this devastating event. These satellite images gave me an appreciation of the impact human industry has on the environment and the fragile relationships existing between natural elements. 

I painted these works with fractured dashes of color, gradually building up the surface in order to capture the effects of the scintillating energy and constant motion of water. Elements of color, light, and energy are abstracted from the landscape and reassembled in new configurations. In this way, color becomes a vibrant, constructed element originating as much in my imagination as in the perceived world. Layered imagery, submerged geometric structures, and patterns found in nature provide a support for these tenuous elements, infusing them with resilience and power. It is my intent to draw attention to our encounters with the natural world and our responsibility to preserve it.

 

Marjorie Arnett

I consider myself an artist who needs solitude as well as community. The passion I feel for painting draws energy from working between realism and whimsy. Being stagnant in my work is my worst fear. I explore new directions, break boundaries, and draw from cultural encounters—whether dancing in a club in Anversa, Italy; swimming with exotic fish and frogs in the Ganges River, India; or playing ball with my neighbor’s dog, Rufus. Encounters touch my life and surface in my images as I paint.

 

 

Ruth Sylmor

For me, photography is the opposite of detachment. It’s a way of touching the other—it’s a caress.

Nan Goldin

These photographs, made in Paris, speak to encounters, the unexpected. They demand a response. Are the situations encountered every day accepted, or are they overlooked, unexplained, or avoided?