ARTIST STATEMENT 2023 “THE MEN I HAVE LOVED”

Built on a 50-year studio practice, my current paintings culminate lifelong investigations in abstraction that include the structure of gardens, the complexity of pattern and the brilliance of color. This new work refers back to earlier work that explored the visual possibilities of domesticity while blatantly referencing the artists I have loved for a lifetime, Matisse, Bonnard and Morandi. Crafted formally and intuitively, my works incorporates opaque and transparent forms, color and patterns, and a quiet order. The rooms are empty – although the table is set, the shelves are filled with containers, so that the viewer can enjoy the hospitality.

1.It's about surprising myself

2.It's about experimentation and invention

3.it's about who I am ... being part of the whole

4. It's about the love and celebration of color and light

5.It's about Stillness and Quiet

6. It's about making lists

7. It's about art history and understanding and considering my place in it.

8. It's about not knowing in the beginning and discovering during the process

9. It's about meditation and prayer

10. It's about taking chances and changing

11. It's about finding poetry in shape

12. It's about a private joke and/ or a private moment

13. It's about generosity, lushness and visual pleasure

14. It's about beauty

15. It's about doubt and anxiety

16. It's about growing older and children growing up and friends dying

17. Its about humor and laughing alone in your studio

18. It's about my garden - growth cycles, changing forms and mutations

19. It's about the things I read, hear on NPR or the nightly news

20. It's about listening to music

21. It's about my love for textiles, Matisse, Joan Mitchell's paintings, Rauschenberg's invocations, Brice Marden's elegance, Agnes Martin's brevity and Louis Armstrong's En Vie en Rose, my love for cities - NYC and Paris

22. It's about immediacy and alchemy

23. It's about shape- the abstracted- the insinuation of a shape

24. It's about surface - it's complex nature - its' emotional possibilities

25. It's about all of these and none of these directly

Sally Bowring  2007,  revised  2010, revised 2023

Artist Statement 2022

Built on a life-time studio practice, my current paintings culminate lifelong investigations in abstraction that include the structure of gardens, the complexity of pattern and the brilliance of color. Each work is a painting within a painting (a visual puzzle impossible to put together) that asks the viewer to slow down and look carefully. This sustained view provides a wealth of visual enrichment. Crafted formally, intuitively ,and at times with contradiction and absurdity, my works incorporate geometric and natural forms. At this point, the organic markings lie under a pile of imperfect geometric shapes. I contrast chaotic color areas with neutral “landings”, so the visual rhythm is fast with a chance to catch your breath.

Recently I had a conversation with a friend about my most recent work and the presence and continual use of shadows and scaffolding. I decided these elements are part of my NYC DNA – growing up in a massive grid with shadows of the IRT in late afternoon has been imprinted in my sense of being and now very visible in my paintings. My paintings always retain a sense of place and locality; something loved, and something lived.

Artist Statement

(artist statement 2020)

Built on a 50-year studio practice, my current paintings culminate lifelong investigations in abstraction that include the structure of gardens, the complexity of pattern and the brilliance of color. Each work is a painting within a painting (a visual puzzle impossible to put together) that asks the viewer to slow down and look carefully. So encouraged, this sustained view provides a wealth of visual enrichment. Crafted formally and intuitively, my works incorporate geometric and natural forms. At this point, the organic markings lie under a pile of imperfect geometric shapes. I contrast chaotic color areas with neutral “landings”, so the visual rhythm is fast with a chance to catch your breath. A good example of this is the painting “Mind over Matter”. My paintings always retain a sense of place and locality; something loved, and something lived.

 
(artist statement 2018)
Over the past 40 years of making art I found my work comes from daily  observations,  essays and novels I have read,  art theory, feminist theory, memoirs, sensations, thoughts, experiences, friend’s opinions, fears, jokes, love, and life lived.
 
Things that inspire me are:
order and disorder, my garden, puddles, shadows, things that repeat themselves (not people), tools and utensils neatly lined up, polka dots, patterns, textiles, the weather, architecture, grids, geometric things juxtaposed with the organic, the light of the changing seasons and the idea of paradise.
 
 When I finish a painting I want to be surprised, then sweetly sigh.
 
2018
 

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work arrives through a series of processes that mimic some of the behavior of domesticity from cleaning the kitchen counters to gardening, through planning, arranging and spraying (and in some cases, masking, stenciling, digging back or exposing). Layers of a combination of metallic enamels and acrylic paint create the paintings with various acrylic solvents – sprayed  – from low-tech plastic spray bottles.  The resulting abstract paintings reference a concern for order, selection and beauty, and read metaphorically, the work alludes to cycles, unpredictability, things seen and hidden and the repetition of life.
This work is inspired, in part, by the medieval gardens of my childhood.  I grew up in Manhattan, near the Cloisters--which loomed large, physically and metaphorically, in my early life.  As a child I played hide go seek in this magical setting.  I still make an annual trip to see the magnificent square gardens that are imprinted in my psyche.
In a contemporary context “ House and Garden” references community gardens, slow eating, seasonalism, localism and a sense of individual control over your eating, well -being and social politics; it parallels the pace of painting. And with the recent tragic events of home foreclosures the “House and Garden” series magnifies the personal significance of home. 

 Egyptian gardens, another inspiration for these paintings, provide two areas for me to explore: structural geometry and the concept of Paradise.  I intentionally use a square format to maintain the abstractness of my paintings – the geometry of these ancient gardens reiterate the painting’s structure and allow me to work with and against it – exploring the possible dualities of geometric and organic.  Ideas of gardens as paradise allow me justify the veiled colors and lush surfaces of my paintings, creating (if you will) a portable, painted heaven on earth.
2012 statement about "The House and Garden" paintings