DONNA FENSTERMAKER

Donna Fenstermaker is inspired by the natural world. She is always carefully observing her surroundings, memorizing fleeting changes in atmosphere and light until she can spend time in her studio and record her interpretation of the moment. Her abstracted landscapes are deeply informed by her mastery of printmaking, with flat expanses of light and dark color employed to create the illusion of depth.

New work in this exhibition was inspired by a stay in the M Stark Gallery artists residency program in August 2024. Fog is an ongoing series for Fenstermaker who found new inspiration in the iconic Half Moon Bay fog and the twisted, gnarled, weathered Monterey Pines along the California Coastal Trail.

Fenstermaker received her B.A. in studio art from San Jose State University with a concentration in ceramics, and her M.F.A. in printmaking from California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA). She taught art in the Contra Costa Community College District for over twenty years. She is an active participant in the Bay Area contemporary art community, often exhibiting her work multiple times per year. Her media include painting, drawing, bookmaking, sculpture, and printmaking. Fenstermaker lives in Berkeley and works in Oakland.

Excerpt of 2018 review of Fenstermaker by DeWitt Cheng: "The paintings of Donna Fenstermaker begin with close observation of the natural world, but depict the essences of that experience, the mood or atmosphere, rather than the specifics that a photograph would capture readily. These subjective interpretations that depict moments of heightened perception belong philosophically to the modernist tradition of conveying the experience of the observer rather than replicating reality. Fenstermaker—whose semi-anglicized name means window-maker, if my German is reliable—creates views of the northern California landscape that look inward as well as outward. She writes: “My images slide between abstraction and realism. I ... struggle to find and remember what first struck me when I wanted to paint the painting.” That dialogic struggle between observed fact and memory, along with the changes that inevitably occur during the creative process—due to the constraints of the medium, as well as happy accident—energizes Fenstermaker’s work.