This catalogue was produced in conjunction with:
Simon Carr: Play Ground
February 27–March 23, 2024
Bowery Gallery
547 W 27th St, Suite 508
New York, New York 10001
646.230.6655 www.bowerygallery.com
Catalogue essay ©2024 Simon Carr
Catalogue design: John Goodrich
Front cover: Chicken
2023, acrylic on canvas, 36 × 48 in..
FEBRUARY 27–MARCH 23, 2024
Over the years I’ve worked on different series of subjects with lots of interconnections. Mostly the topics have been figurative, or narrative, but for brief moments they’ve become abstract investigations of landscape or anatomy. A certain subject comes to interest me, usually without any volition on my part, and becomes the center of my studio work. Each motif, whether city scenes, horses, hunting, Bible paintings and now this series of children playing, requires specific preparation. Mostly that means a lot of drawing, from life and if I need to from photos. Studies of location, an interest in anatomy, and research on costume or texts are all necessary. The stock of topical drawings grows and covers the walls in the studio. I pull from them, develop compositions, and begin to paint. The drawings serve as a constant refreshment,
Charity 2023, acrylic on canvas, 36 × 38 in.a vocabulary of images and possibilities, and the wall continues to grow and change throughout the creation of the series.
In the case of these paintings, almost all are memories; sometimes even the clothing or toys look old fashioned. I have a lot of in-house models. The playground is a real one near where we live. In years past I did studies of it; some of those were in the last show I had at Bowery.
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.
The difficulties are many. First how to make them paintings that represent, rather than representations. It’s a constant balancing act. How to paint faces, figures, the environment they are in, in a way that lets a painting open that world up for the viewer (me, initially) to enter, in a way that seems real and consistent, one that calls on experience and memory for validation and then goes beyond it. Much of my studio time is immersed in that world, slowly letting it take shape. Much of the time too is engaged with an often-frustrating battle with the materials, with color, and above all with drawing. Drawing is the thing I love most and find the most difficult. But it is always just a step towards painting.
Why are these figures almost faceless? I think it is because something else is foregrounded when the figures don’t have clear facial expression, or detailed expressions anyway. The gestures express, the context
Victory Dance 2023, ebony pencil, 24 × 19 in.
expresses. Discussing this with a friend, the poet Leonard Schwartz, he offered a quote, or an approximate quote, from Robert Bresson: “Facial expressions reveal the personality, but they obscure the soul. How to show the latter?”
I think in the spring the horses will be back on the studio walls, I miss them and the endless aggravation of trying to understand how they move or stand or just look at me. The playground paintings depend on discoveries from the more recent horse paintings, with their emphasis on the “ground”—meaning both what they are standing on or in front of, but also the space around and through the figures, the other world the subjects of the paintings inhabit. Trying to unify and complete the experience of that other world is what this is all about.
—Simon Carr January 2024
With Bottle 2023, acrylic on canvas, 18 × 14 in.
Crowded Day 2023, acrylic on canvas, 33 × 53 in.
On the Train
2023, acrylic on canvas, 20 × 30 in.
Red Bucket
2023, acrylic on canvas, 14 × 11 in.
Turn Left
2023, acrylic on canvas, 24 × 18 in.
Surprise
2023, acrylic on canvas, 18 × 24 in.
Gladioli 2023, acrylic on canvas, 20 × 16 in.
Flowers
2023, acrylic on canvas, 14 × 12 in.
Projects 2023,
ebony pencil, 11½ × 13½ in.
Biker, Walker and Bess by the River 2023, watercolor and ebony pencil, 12 × 15 in.
Bikes and Scooter 2023, ebony pencil, 11½ × 13½ in.
Simon Carr is a painter and printmaker. He divides his time between New York City and Cherry Plain, NY. His work is represented by Bowery Gallery in New York City, (www.bowerygallery.org) and the Alice Gauvin Gallery in Washington, DC. (www.alicegauvinprojects.com). His work can be seen online at www.simoncarrstudio.com.
Carr teaches Drawing at Manhattan Community College in New York City.
Left: Study for “Charity” 2023, ebony pencil, 12 × 12 in
Back cover: On Wheels 2023, acrylic on canvas, 34 × 46 in.
