Abigail Bowen | Luisa
Abigail Bowen
Luisa
Medium
Oil on canvas
Size
120 × 120 cm
Price
£6000 (framed)
About the work
Luisa sits firmly within Abigail Bowen’s approach to painting, where the focus is on atmosphere rather than image.
The surface is built slowly through layers of thin, fluid oil paint. These translucent glazes allow colour to shift and deepen, creating a sense of light moving through the painting rather than sitting on top of it. This is central to Bowen’s process, where each layer contributes to a surface that subtly changes depending on how it is viewed.
The composition remains open and unresolved. There are suggestions of vertical movement and depth, but nothing settles into a fixed form. Like much of Bowen’s work, it avoids direct reference, instead working through colour, balance and tone to create an emotional response.
There’s a quiet tension between control and unpredictability. The paint is allowed to run and soften, but the overall structure holds. Lighter passages move through the centre, with darker areas grounding the painting.
Bowen often describes her work as exploring something just beyond what can be clearly seen. Luisa sits in that space. Not abstract for the sake of it, but as a way of holding something that resists definition.
Wine pairing
To be officially paired on the 10th April by Henry at Butlers wine cellar