Simon Carr- Play Ground

Bowery Gallery presents the recent work of Simon Carr Feb 27-March 22, with an opening reception Saturday March 2 from 3-6.

The exhibition is a series of children playing, outdoors, in a park near the artist’s home. 

“The paintings in this show began with sketches of children playing in our apartment, just because they looked interesting. Then the drawings got more complicated. Where were the children? What are they doing? What is the drama being enacted? I drew on long memories of generations of children on playgrounds. When children play they can enter a world with each other which by its nature excludes adults. That was the hook that got me: the idea of a world that excludes adults, a different world, like the world of paintings and the world of animals. Observing or investigating that new world made the studio begin to come alive with these new paintings.”

 Carr’s other recent exhibitions have focused on city scenes, and more recently farm scenes and in particular an intensive study of horses in their environment. Carr begins with drawings. Drawings on the spot note figures, environments, details, he then assembles them, along with reference photos, into larger drawn compositions in the studio. The paintings are done from these drawings. The process itself allows for memory and experience to enter the paintings, worked on for long periods of time, rather than transcriptions of things seen in a particular moment.

 There will be a gallery talk and book launch Saturday March 16 From 3-5 for “Horses on Paper, drawings by Simon Carr, Poems by Leonard Schwartz.” Published by Chax Press, (chax.org) with a reading by the poet and a short discussion of the exhibition with the artist. A catalog is available, with an essay by the artist describing the exhibition.