NYAB Event - Pam Bowers "Memento Mori"

Pam Bowers "Memento Mori"

Bowery Gallery

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Using a moody, saturated palette and rich, painterly approach Bowers depicts fish, birds, and fruit, as well as biological specimens in jars set within landscapes possessing a sensuality evocative of 17thcentury Neapolitan still life painting, yet imbued with a quality of timelessness that embraces both past and contemporary experience. They are highly personal and enigmatic works that hint at mysteries beyond the reach of comprehension.

The stories that Bowers tells in these works are more often experienced and felt rather than known, her intent being to “to reach the intellect through the senses.” The paintings are filled with echoes of intuitive meaning, evoking a sense of pathos through empathy with the creatures she depicts, taken out of the safety of their own environments and immersed in a liminal world of twilight hillsides, stormy seas, and fiery infernos. The paintings reference images across diverse sources including mythic history, literature, the history of art, and alchemy, thus merging contemporary experience with echoes of traditions to create a timeless, richly evocative world. Barry Nemett, writer, painter and Chair of the Painting Department at Maryland College Institute of Art describes her work as: “something thrillingly eerie and hard to define, by floating us into the black, ambiguous waters of the sublime.”