Lowell Boyers

Primavera Materia

May 19th – June 30th, 2012

Opening Reception: May 19th, 2012, 6:00 to 9:00 pm

Deborah Colton Gallery is pleased to present, Primavera Materia, the latest solo exhibition of paintings by New York based artist, Lowell Boyers. The artist’s work was first seen at the Deborah Colton Gallery in the 2004 group exhibition Touch and Temperature: Art in the Age of Cybernetic Totalism, curated by Michael Rees. Since then Lowell has had three solo exhibitions at Deborah Colton Gallery – in his 2006 solo exhibition Awakening, his 2009 solo exhibition Emerge, and in his 2010 solo exhibition Whispers of Becoming.

In Lowell Boyers’ new body of work entitled “Primavera Materia” the paintings seem to embody the expression of “Spring.” The heightened color and action of the form and figures appears to courageously burst off the canvas. Each painting suggests there is no distinction between the inside and outside of the figures, and the expression of the landscape of the paintings appears like a piece or movement of music, swirling, exploding, with diaphanous pours of paint, eliciting suggestions of inner and outer textures of the figure’s current moment. Rich gardens of flowers, star stuff, wind and water, and figural dimensions remain the culture of Boyers’ creations, but more and more these works maintain a flourish that harnesses both a expression of boundless symphonic musical texture as well as a rounded meditative stillness. The naked canvas suggests a fertile ground from which each note bursts like seedlings from the soil, promising and delivering wide swaths of ecstatic painterly joy. The title also references the painting “Venere dinotando la Primavera” by Botticelli. Various interpretations of the painting by Botticelli have been set forth, but it is generally agreed that at least at one level the painting is, as characterized by Cunningham and Reich (2009), “an elaborate mythological allegory of the burgeoning fertility of the world.” Boyers appears to embrace the heart of this characterization, but his paintings suggest there is no need for allegory for there is an unending, flourishing majesty and fertility of the world that stems moment to moment from within.

To quote Lowell, “The creative impulse can cut through habitual phenomena, how we see things, feel things, our perception of self, our notion of body, birth and death, of appearance.” His creativity has successfully cut through the mundane converging boundaries into springboards for liberation. Lowell states, “I see the creative imagination as a birthright belonging to every being, and my work is fundamentally a textural portrayal of the unfolding blossoming of various stages of awakening to that active nature.”

Having received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA from Yale, Lowell Boyers currently lives and works in New York City and exhibits his work in New York, nationally and internationally.

Deborah Colton Gallery is founded on being an innovative showcase for ongoing presentation and promotion of strong historical and visionary contemporary artists world-wide, whose diverse practices include painting, works on paper, sculpture, video, photography, performance and conceptual future media installations. The gallery aspires to provide a forum through connecting Texas, national and international artists to make positive change.