oil on canvas
24" x 30"
$2800
oil on canvas
34" x18"
$2800
oil on canvas
34" x 32"
$3600
Gina Sawin
Gina Sawin received her BFA and MFA degrees in New York at Parsons School of Design, where she studied with Leland Bell, Paul Resika, and John Heliker, as well as distinguished visiting artists such as Robert DeNiro, Sr. and Larry Rivers. The influence of these painters, who uphold a tradition of painterly representation based on modernist principles, is evident in Sawin's series of bird pictures. The apparent simplicity of the compositions relies on abstract structures, while the overall brushwork weaves the animals into their surroundings, creating a cohesive whole.
Sawin's attachment to Maine is evident in her work: the paintings are informed by memories and images from a lifetime of summers on Casco Bay. She came from an artistic household: her father was a New York painter, who, while of the time and culture of brash abstract expressionism, painted small jewel-like abstractions of landscapes and still lifes; her mother is a highly respected art historian and writer. Sawin worked for ten years as an art director in New York, but after she married she was able to give up her commercial work and devote her professional life to painting. She paints in a studio on a family farm in Maine. Her husband, Charles, runs a conservation organization; they have two children. Sawin's work has been exhibited in, among other places, New York City, Washington, D.C., Sun Valley, Jackson Hole, and several Maine galleries.
Artist's Statement
"In the words of the celebrated naturalist John Hay, 'we are attracted to birds through the spirit. [It] is their constant presence, and at the same time their elusiveness, which intrigues us.' This intrigue is the basis for my ongoing series of bird paintings. Through this motif, the work suggests our spiritual - and sometimes tenuous - connection to the planet. It also expresses my connection to the Maine landscape: deep-rooted memories and images from summers on the Maine coast inform these pictures.
In a more formalist context, bird shapes have an inherent potential for abstraction, which corresponds and appeals to my background and training. I studied in New York with a group of painters who were influenced by the teachings of Hans Hoffman in the 1950's, and whose work might best be described as 'painterly representation.' We are painters who are drawn to nature but committed to the principles of abstraction. In my paintings, the birds hovering or reflecting ambiguously between earth, water, and sky, pose interesting problems of composition, form, and both two- and three-dimensional spatial relationships.
The birds are often featured alone, almost emblematically, suffused in an air of detached contemplation. I work from sketches, photographs, memory, and imagination - reworking and building up dense layers of paint with sort of a stipple technique. Because of the nature of oils, this process can extend over a period of days or weeks, or more, allowing each painting to find and redefine itself gradually. The pebbly surface which results allows flecks of color to emerge and blend the bird with its pictorial and natural surroundings, creating a cohesive whole.