Abigail Bowen: New Paintings

About

Brighton-based artist Abigail Bowen works on a large scale, creating emotionally informed abstract paintings. She tries to create fully autonomous paintings that evoke an emotional response in the viewer. She often starts with a word, feeling or passage of text and tries to visualise those emotions in colour, form and scale. Although some areas of the canvas may resemble water, clouds or sky, she tries to remove all references to reality in the hope that the viewer can respond to the paintings as unique objects in their own right. The rich layers of oil paint change with the light, continually revealing more of their story. She is currently particularly influenced by Rothko, Francis Bacon, Diebenkorn, de Kooning, Kline and Monet’s waterlillies. Her work explores love, motherhood, loss – drawing on personal experience to create beautiful paintings out of life’s difficult emotions. They are cathartic. Turning negatives into positives. Abigail was born in Brighton and graduated in Fine Art (Painting) from Chelsea College of Art in 1996. She shows regularly with The Chalk Gallery in Sussex and in various group shows.  This is her first exhibition with Lane House Arts.