Whiting Tennis

Russo Lee Gallery is pleased to exhibit At Variance by invited artist Whiting Tennis. For this exhibition, Tennis has created paintings, drawings, and collage works that combine a variety of mediums. He presents a broad range of work in both his use of color or monochromatic relationships, as well as explorations of abstraction and figuration. Tennis states, “I’ve noticed for years that while starting a drawing on a blank sheet of paper, I can feel opposing forces wanting to influence what happens, whether it’s abstraction vs. figuration or mechanical vs. organic, or dynamic vs. static etc. That tension feels a little like electricity, and sometimes I think that this subtle energy is helping to drive the drawing.”

Whiting Tennis was born in Virginia, then moved to Seattle in 1972 in his early teens. He received his BFA in Painting & Drawing from the University of Washington in 1984. Tennis has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, WA; Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, OR; and the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY. He had several works in the 2014 California-Pacific Triennial at Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA. In 2008, he was the recipient of the Arlene Schnitzer prize, given as part of the Portland Art Museum’s Contemporary Northwest Art Awards Exhibition. Additionally, Tennis was the winner of the 2007 Neddy Artist Fellowship for Painting awarded by Seattle’s Behnke Foundation. Major works by the artist are included in private and public collections including Seattle Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Orange County Museum of Art, and Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS, and the Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY.

At Variance

February 1 – March 2, 2024

Press Release