Constance Edith Fowler

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Critics have observed that Constance Fowler's works range from representational or expressive realism to abstract. Fowler published a limited edition of her master's thesis, which included twenty wood engravings of Willamette Valley historic sites and explanatory text, entitled The Old Days, In and Near Salem, Oregon. When it was displayed at the Salem library, the library staff wrote, The Capitol Journal of Salem said, "The pioneer period of our native state is graphically presented in the twenty wood engravings of historic spots around Salem done by Constance Fowler... Miss Fowler has been accorded recognition as one of the northwest's outstanding artists. She is an annual exhibitor in the northwest and Pacific coast galleries. One of her pictures was selected a prize to the state, winning first place in National Art Week in 1940." Biographer Roger Hull has said of Fowler's move to Michigan, "Leaving Oregon in 1947 was a major step at a crucial moment in the cultural history of the United States, with World War II at an end and younger artists questioning the values of American Regionalism and realism." In another analysis, Hull wrote, Commenting in 1957, that "Her recent work, now on display at the Bush Museum, will no doubt surprise many of these admirers, both for the new aesthetic approaches and the new concepts that motivate this work", Carl Hall explored differences in her later works that are "very contemporary in her concern for the abstract consequence", with "this atomic age the great impersonal forces at work in the universe have to be taken into account" and the "human frailty with which we confront them". Hall continued, Roger Hull reported she was aware of perplexing some of her viewers, and she "wrote with a note of ruefulness", that "The term 'abstract' causes many mortals to barricade the windows of their minds and reach for the aspirin." In 1996 Hull wrote, "she was rightly recognized as an artist genuinely expressive of the mood and poetry of the Northwest. More than most others, she sensed and expressed the turbulence and darkness of nature, as well."

• William G. Purcell prize, best work in Oregon Society of Artists spring exhibition, 1934 • Carnegie grants, summers, 1936 through 1938 • First place, National Art Week, 1940 • Katherine B. Baker Memorial Purchase prize, 28th annual exhibition of northwest artisls, Seattle Art Museum, 1942. • Willamette University award, 1991