Brooke McGowen
Residency:
January 1 – 31, 2022

Brooke McGowen is an artist based in Northern California whose practice entails the loose application of paint to evoke figurative forms and landscapes. The flowing interaction of bright colors alludes to an abstracted landscape, leaving much to the viewer’s imagination. Fluid pigment swirls and intertwines at will, following the principles of Fluid Dynamics. This seemingly random flowing paint, in conjunction with a figurative scene, offers new possibilities of experience for the viewer.

After moving from New York to a remote area of Northern California in 2018, McGowen was inspired by majestic mountains and tenacious pines to paint the series Magic Mountain. Living in the wilderness enabled her to coax the flowing paint into vegetative forms, as in the painting Entanglement. Trips to the coastal regions stimulated her Cezanne-like series On the Beach. 

Brooke McGowen studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and at the Art Academy in Vienna, Austria. After living in Germany and Portugal, the artist returned to New York City in 2008. Her work appeared in group exhibitions at Exit Art in Chelsea and North Light Gallery in Brooklyn. McGowen had a solo show in 2014 titled Flowing Figures at the Fashion Moda Gallery, Lower East Side. In 2017 and 2019, her work was featured at the Hudson Guild Gallery in Chelsea, New York as well as at M. David & Co. Gallery in Brooklyn. In March 2020, the Little Raven Gallery of San Francisco showed her paintings in a solo exhibition titled New Paintings.