ROADSIDE BOUQUETS
Paintings by Colleen HermanSarah Brook Gallery is pleased to announce “Roadside Bouquets,” an online solo exhibition by New York-based artist, Colleen Herman. Herman created 14 new paintings for the show, each of them a portrait of a group of flower buds in airy pastels, round blues and dark, muddy greens. In keeping with Herman’s intuitive, physical approach, these colors are applied in a swath of felt gestures: from smooth and transparent clouds of color to scrawled tangles apparently applied with the artist’s fingertips.
Future generations seeing these paintings will need to be reminded that they were made in 2020, amidst global affliction by the Covid-19 virus and deeply felt sociopolitical American turmoil. Herman took inspiration in this broadly difficult time from the humble tradition of the roadside bouquet. These informal groupings of farm flowers are offered in stands across the country on a donation honor system: take a bunch, leave five bucks in the cup.
Future generations seeing these paintings will need to be reminded that they were made in 2020, amidst global affliction by the Covid-19 virus and deeply felt sociopolitical American turmoil. Herman took inspiration in this broadly difficult time from the humble tradition of the roadside bouquet. These informal groupings of farm flowers are offered in stands across the country on a donation honor system: take a bunch, leave five bucks in the cup.
It is mercantilism without oversight, unspoken trust as a functional form of governance: a wish for the future and a material example for the present of the small scale offering wisdom for the large scale.
Flowers themselves, both inherently and in Herman’s emotive, loose representations, are transitory, demonstrating the immovable force of time and its clambering elevation of beauty. Herman’s canvases read as much like plumes of smoke and gaseous clouds of color as bunches of flowers; this treatment emphasizes the passing, dispersing state of their being as wilting bodies, as sex organs, as bursts of life. Pushed thusly as icons into abstraction, Herman’s Roadside Bouquets also suggest a variety of moods or vibrations, like a candid aura photograph of a group of friends.
Flowers themselves, both inherently and in Herman’s emotive, loose representations, are transitory, demonstrating the immovable force of time and its clambering elevation of beauty. Herman’s canvases read as much like plumes of smoke and gaseous clouds of color as bunches of flowers; this treatment emphasizes the passing, dispersing state of their being as wilting bodies, as sex organs, as bursts of life. Pushed thusly as icons into abstraction, Herman’s Roadside Bouquets also suggest a variety of moods or vibrations, like a candid aura photograph of a group of friends.
Pleasant Vale, 2020
Colleen Herman
Gouache & acrylic on canvas
30 x 36 / 31 x 37 in
SOLD
Roadside ii, 2020
Colleen Herman
Oil on canvas
9 x 12 / 10 x 13 in
SOLD
Lasher Road, 2020
Colleen Herman
Gouache & acrylic on canvas
24 x 30 / 25 x 31 in
SOLD
Flower, 2020
Colleen Herman
Gouache & acrylic on canvas
9 x 12 / 10 x 13 in
SOLD
Bouquet ii, 2020
Colleen Herman
Gouache & acrylic on canvas
9 x 12 / 10 x 13 in
SOLD
Route 9, 2020
Colleen Herman
Gouache & acrylic on canvas
24 x 30 / 25 x 31 in
SOLD
Roadside iii, 2020
Colleen Herman
Oil on canvas
9 x 12 / 10 x 13 in
SOLD
Bouquet i, 2020
Colleen Herman
Gouache & acrylic on canvas
9 x 12 / 10 x 13 in
SOLD
Roadside i, 2020
Colleen Herman
Gouache & acrylic on canvas
9 x 12 / 10 x 13 in
SOLD
Langridge, 2020
Colleen Herman
Gouache & acrylic on canvas
24 x 30 / 25 x 31 in
SOLD
Grass ii, 2020
Colleen Herman
Gouache & acrylic on wax paper
16 x 20 / 19 x 23 in
SOLD
Midnight Stems, 2020
Colleen Herman
Gouache & acrylic on wax paper
16 x 20 / 19 x 23 in
SOLD
Clermont, 2020
Colleen Herman
Gouache & acrylic on wax paper
16 x 20 / 19 x 23 in
SOLD