Exhibition of British Painter Sheila Girling to Open in Fife This Summer 

This summer Fife arts organisation, SPACE TO BREATHE, will host the centenary exhibition of the ground-breaking British painter Sheila Girling.

Over 70 large scale paintings and collages of the artist, dating from the 1970s to the 2010s, will on sale at Bowhouse, Fife. Her talent as a painter embraces American abstraction while remaining rooted in a distinctive British sensibility.

The exhibition will include sculptures by Girling’s husband and lifelong artistic collaborator, the internationally renowned sculptor Sir Anthony Caro. Girling described their marriage as ‘a 64 year conversation about art’. Each freely admitted her influence on his work as on occasion Girling chose or changed the colours of Caro’s sculptures and often painted them herself. While the work of each is on display together, the focus of the exhibition is the work of Sheila Girling.

Girling’s work is a testament to an artistic life led at the centre of the British and American avant-garde art scene from the 1960s until her death in 2015. The close circle of the couple included, among others, the seminal art theorist Clement Greenberg and artists Jules Olitski, Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler. Her close friend Kenneth Noland encouraged her to switch to acrylic paint, and she stayed with that for the rest of her life.

The exhibition marks the second year that SPACE TO BREATHE has held an exhibition in Bowhouse. Last year’s exhibition of contemporary nature photography attracted over 5,000 visitors in three weeks. The organisation is led by curator and art consultant Sophie Camu and her husband and photographer Alexander Lindsay who said “We are thrilled to bring this museum-quality exhibition to Fife. Girling’s large canvases dazzle in their intensity and brilliance of colour and form. They are abstract and yet grounded in figuration, evoking the natural world while expressing the dynamic qualities of the medium itself – be it acrylic on canvas or paper collage. This will be a fantastic opportunity to engage with some of Girling’s most significant works and we look forward to welcoming those who may be familiar with her work, or who come to it for the first time this summer.”

A series of free art events, workshops and lectures will take place at Bowhouse during the show. Further details and the calendar of events will be announced in June.

Dates: 20th July – 5th August and 17th August – 1st September

Irene Brown