Penny Bovell

The sky is a space for imaginative possibilities, it is something and nothing, we are immersed in it and it is within us. My work explores ideas about air, sky and space. As Immaterial, often abstract and invisible these phenomena stand as the antithesis to the solidity of earth. Whilst past bodies of work dealt with clouds, air, the weather and climate change I am currently exploring notions of deep space and cosmology; in other words attempting to find expression for how I understand the universe and being in the world.

It is perhaps contrary to translate these concerns into painting given the subject suits experiential practice, inflatable objects and the like. I am mostly driven by the focus and reverie that comes from concentrated time spent in the studio wherein painting and drawing remains a tenacious and central form of expression. It is the process of painting and drawing, material, spatial and temporal, that I am interested in. I try to focus this interest by exploring the appearances and resemblances specific to aerial subjects. Dispersals, precipitation, flow and erasure of pigment and medium evoke myriad shapes and events that I can imagine to be puffs of smoke, floating clouds, currents of winds or astral explosions.