Perspective painting of building and street corner. Streetlights in top left, road runs along the right side of the building.

For her Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Thesis Exhibition at GVSU, student Elizabeth Fowler created a series of paintings aimed to separate one’s surroundings from the clutter and noise often found in urban settings. Her urban landscapes included exterior view of grocery stores, stripped of their signs and flattened by their anonymity as the color is dulled and the perspective is skewed. On her paintings Fowler comments, “The world at present is home to congested cities, complex technological systems and an ever-changing, raucous human race. Ironically, despite our constant exposure to our people-filled environment, we find it difficult to form long-term, meaningful bonds with those that surround us. One is capable of feeling remote in a bustling urban setting. These paintings reflect this sense of public isolation by clearing out noise and removing human residue from the surfaces of social places.”