Alexandra McGowan | Fervor

Sargent's Daughters is pleased to present _Fervor_, the New York solo debut of Richmond, VA-based painter Alexandra McGowan. Using fluid and improvisational techniques, McGowan creates radiant fields of color on cotton bedsheets rather than canvas. These works express the safety and joy of queer domestic intimacy, which the artist contrasts with experiences of uncertainty and fear. McGowan's approach to abstraction is affective rather than analytical, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in an emotive visual field. Each work begins with white cotton sheets that match those on the artist's own bed. Stretched like canvas, they deliberately transgress the boundaries between McGowan's artistic practice and her intimate life. For McGowan, her bed is symbolic of her queerness – both a place of tenderness and a political signifier. The cotton is highly absorbent, and McGowan saturates the support with color through a self-devised process of using water to spread and blur acrylic paint. The movement of the water and pull of gravity collaborate to create unexpected compositions. McGowan uses color as a highly charged visual language. The soft, muted palettes of her earlier works now share space with sulfuric yellows and rich magentas, acid greens and grey-blues. The easy safety and closeness of the bedroom is tinged with political instability and surveillance, and these colors represent both the fear and protectiveness felt by the artist. In the midst of uncertainty and anger, McGowan's work speaks to the joy and safety found in love and domesticity.