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12
Views (Man on Mule), 2008, Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper, 22 x 30 inches
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James
Harris Gallery is pleased to present 12 Views, an exhibition
featuring new works on paper by Claire Cowie. Cowie’s work
has always been distinguished by its exploration of the familiar
and the strange. The artist continues to develop this tension in
her most recent work, in which she creates a vast panorama of characters
and scenes across a suite of individual landscapes.
In 12 Views,
Cowie takes inspiration from the prolific work of Hokusai, one of
the masters of nineteenth-century Japanese painting and printmaking.
In his landscapes, Hokusai challenged naturalism with abbreviation
and exaggeration, creating images that were as true to the artist’s
imagination as they were to nature. Cowie’s landscapes similarly
describe a world invented in the artist’s mind, representing
a surreal hybridization of place and subject.
Each of Cowie’s new works shares a consistent horizon line
and other compositional elements, allowing for a layering of meanings
that stretch beyond any individual scene. Here the artist returns
to her signature subjects, including the meerkat and other familiar
creatures, but she heightens her experimentation with both color
and space. Creating tension through the use of unnatural hues and
through a deliberate lack of defined space, Cowie plays with the
balance between the comforting and the disconcerting and creates
landscapes that are as psychological as they are physical.
Since her 2003
residency and exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery, Cowie’s
work has been featured at Tacoma Art Museum, Portland Art Museum,
the University of Texas at Dallas and, most recently, Western Bridge.
Reviews of her work have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Modern
Painters, and the Los Angeles Times.
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12
Views (Floating Head), 2008
Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper
22 x 30 inches
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12
Views (Staircase), 2008
Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper
22 x 30 inches
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12
Views (Three Meerkats), 2008
Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper
22 x 30 inches
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12
Views (Man on Mule), 2008
Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper
22 x 30 inches
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12
Views (Four Puppies), 2008
Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper
22 x 30 inches
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12
Views (Pink Tree), 2008
Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper
22 x 30 inches |
12
Views (Blue Tree), 2008
Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper
22 x 30 inches |
12
Views (Rainbow), 2008
Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper
22 x 30 inches
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12
Views (Village), 2008
Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper
22 x 30 inches |
12
Views (Glacier), 2008
Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper
22 x 30 inches |
12
Views (Bonsai), 2008
Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper
22 x 30 inches |
12
Views (Bridge), 2008
Watercolor, sumi color and
pencil on paper
22 x 30 inches
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