The Art Out There: Margaret Bowland 2

The last time I posted her work (December 2008) I had little to say other than "Wow", and I guess that hasn't really changed. These are paintings that speak quite well for themselves. Sometimes a visual can say quite clearly and elegantly things that words can only stumble around. But this blog has become a way for me to practice writing and thinking about art as much as it is a place to share all the wonderful stuff I keep coming across. So with that in mind, I'd like to say that Margaret Bowland is a painter of and about beauty. Beauty is an old pre-modern artistic preoccupation but she approaches it with a very contemporary awareness. Our notions of beauty have changed. We no longer think in terms of ideals or absolutes, despite the fact that we strive for and desire them. She is aware that real beauty, in art as in life, is derived from something inside rather than from the mere surface of things (or people), and so she depicts the tension between these two; Inner beauty vs. outer beauty, how the two can seem so at odds. Interestingly, her technique, the surface of her work if you well, is as beautiful as the content is challenging.
see more of her work at her website: www.margaretbowland.com