Double Still Life

Katy Cowan’s work incorporates a variety of materials into a studio practice that investigates the intersection of fine art, craft, and labor. Cowan is able to seamlessly shift between media from painting to ceramics to textile to sculpture, and back again; each of these transitions rely on a larger systematic way of thinking within the artist’s practice through alteration, repetition, and a conceptual emphasis on material choice. Double Still Life (2015), consists of a playful but thoughtful juxtaposition of a wooden still life positive and a physical representation of its shadowy other. The rough-hewn shapes of fruits and a wine bottle are screwed together in a matter-of-fact way that highlights the process of the object's making. Cowan paints the plywood surfaces with washes of watercolor and floral imprints and reconfigures those wood slices to further abstract the form’s legibility, with the intention of drawing more attention to the materiality of the object itself. Cowan’s deliberate confusion of representation asks viewers to stumble when recognizing subject matter, and her material choice of wood proposes to elevate this material to that of a more traditional sculptural medium.