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Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Phoebe Toland Phoebe Toland was born in 1952 in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. She earned her MFA. from Montana State University in Bozeman in 1983 and her B.FA. from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1975. She is currently a technician in the Conservation Department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has had a solo exhibition at the More Gallery, Philadelphia, in 1985 and has designed the sets and backdrops for several theatrical productions in Montana. Toland is the recipient of an Artist Residence fellowship from Ucross Foundation, Ucross, Wyoming. In Phoebe Toland's large, unstretched canvases, figuration and abstraction pass gracefully back and forth across each others' boundaries. Undulant folds and crisp ledges shift easily into suggestions of limbs, torsos and arms. A charged energy crackles from the paintings as dark, moody colors alternate with intimations of covert, interior light. The lean female persona, glimpsed as if in flight, handily traverses the negative and positive ground. Toland's' earlier paintings utilized collaged cloth. In one work on view, Oh Yes I Sceam, she returns to this technique, augmenting the canvas with cotton sheeting to enhance the spatial illusion. Indeed, the feel and look of fabric, whether on bolts, cut or folded, still exerts a powerful influence on her aesthetic sensibility. Judith Stein
The work of Phoebe Toland is shown courtesy of the artist. 1. You Missed It, 1985 2. Never Filled, 1985 3. Free, 1986 4. Passive, Aggressive, 1986 5. The Old Yin-Yang, 1986 6. Weight of the World, 1986 7. House of Tears 1986 8. Ruined Time, Wasted Lives, 1986 9. (working at) Letting Go, 1986 10. Untitled, 1986 11. Oh Yes I Sceam, 1986
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