Spencer Finch

Spencer Finch is an American conceptual artist known for his rigorous yet poetic investigations of light, color, and perception. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Finch studied at Hamilton College and the Rhode Island School of Design before completing his MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989. His work combines scientific methodology with subjective experience, often attempting to capture and recreate ephemeral moments of natural phenomena through installations, drawings, and light-based sculptures. Finch's practice is characterized by meticulous observation and measurement of atmospheric conditions, light qualities, and chromatic effects in specific places and times. His projects have included recreating the color of moonlight, the sky on particular days, or the light inside Emily Dickinson's bedroom. Notable works include his permanent installation at the National September 11 Memorial Museum, "Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning" (2014), which features 2,983 individually colored watercolor paper squares, each representing a victim of the attacks. He has also created major public installations at sites such as the High Line in New York City and has exhibited extensively at institutions including the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Morgan Library & Museum. Finch's work engages with themes of memory, mortality, and the limits of perception and representation. His artistic approach reflects influences from Impressionism, particularly Claude Monet's serial investigations of light, as well as conceptual art traditions. Through his attempts to quantify and reproduce subjective visual experiences, Finch creates work that bridges empirical observation and emotional resonance, questioning the boundaries between science and art, objectivity and subjectivity.