Katherine Bowling | Trees

Winston Wächter Fine Art, New York is pleased to present an exhibition of new and recent paintings by Katherine Bowling. The exhibition, Trees, marks Bowling’s first solo presentation with the gallery.

As a landscape painter, Bowling finds inspiration in the nature that surrounds her in upstate New York, musing on the myriad ways that light, season, and perspective can shape appearance in nature.

Bowling constructs her works by using oil paint layered onto matte spackle on wood panel. She often begins with a sketch of a tree from memory, a photograph, or observed in nature. After planting the initial image, she then scrapes away the surface, responding and rebuilding the painting based on the marks left behind. In addition to brushes, Bowling uses her hands, sandpaper, paper towels, and other materials that create a tactile experience of creation. Air bubbles, paint drips, and other imperfections are incorporated into the work. The resulting images are luminous, and often soft in focus. While trees remain the central subject, other images and figures often emerge and fade into the background.

Bowling lives and works in upstate New York and in New York City. She has always found inspiration in forests. Glimpses of water through trees reappear in her work throughout her career, like a recurring dream. Season and light are also central subjects to Bowling’s work. In Summer Sun, daylight dapples through leaves and becomes the key presence in the work. In Family, twilight hues throw stately conifers into striking architectural silhouettes. Dusky blues provide dramatic contrast to autumn leaves in Orange Fall, and bleak winter grays create shadowy woods in Dark Walk. Amid the landscape that influenced the sweeping vistas of the Hudson River School, Bowling instead explores the beauty and calm found in ordinary, steadfast trees.