Brit Borcher

Brit Borcher works from a studio in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she is a faculty member of the University of Arkansas School of Art. She received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, BFA in Studio Art from Hunter College, City University of New York, and BFA in Music Theater Performance from Viterbo University in LaCrosse, WI. Borcher is a Southeast chapter member of Wisconsin Visual Artists and has participated in painting and textile workshops through the New York Crit Club, Kent Blossom Art Intensive at Kent State University, Peninsula School of Art, and Studio/ Line of Sight. In 2023, Borcher was a Windgate Accelerator Grant recipient. Since then, her work has been included in exhibitions in Arkansas, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York, including TMA Contemporary, Trout Museum of Art, Vicinity, RAM Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Geometric Gestures, Dodomu Gallery, Elevate at 21c, 21c Museum Hotel, Bentonville, AR, What’s Yours, What’s Mine?, Blacksburg Museum and Cultural Center, Brit Borcher: From an Unlikely Place, Monroe Arts Center, and the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Borcher is curious about the strange potential visual language has, in her case, a concoction of abstract and figurative forms, to communicate the quality of space and experience. She is highly attuned to the artists who make fusions of abstraction and figuration that form the contemporary context for her work. Like those artists, she pulls imagery from a personal and ever-expanding archive well-stocked with references to the body, memory, pattern and decoration, interior and exterior spaces, textiles, and craft to work through her questions and curiosities. Borcher’s most recent bodies of work, Cut And, But Not Quite and Wreckollection, attempt to puzzle out aspects of identity that feel culturally misaligned and while painting, collapse the perceived distances between societal expectations and authentic self. In the studio, iterative and serial modes of making like collaging, drawing, writing, printmaking, and painting, are integral to this work, as are repetitious acts and variations on adjustment, removal, embellishment, and demolition. These moves build successive layers of imagery with imposing elements that weigh down, pin, or highlight particularly striking passages and create opportunities to continually move forward by shifting the image. The primary endeavor is translating discoveries, from daily quirks to lifelong quibbles, into legible visual language. This repetitive mode of making continues until the final picture has emerged. Often, this feels like a mysterious encounter rather than clarity. Working in various modes also provides opportunities to consider where attributes such as vulnerability, sensitivity, and generosity intersect with creative actions.