East End Arts Presents
Anne Sherwood Pundyk: "Beauty Out of Bounds"
March 23 to May 5, 2024
Artist Statement
“Beauty Out of Bounds” presents work made outside convention. As a young girl I understood intuitively how to shape simple materials such as fabric and string to ground my wild thoughts. Much later I found I could adapt these everyday forms to make fine art. Operating beyond tradition has been hard won over many decades. Now my unstretched paintings slip free from expectation.
“Beauty Out of Bounds” includes large, abstract paintings; stitched works on paper; photographs of journals; and an artist’s book. Never before exhibited paintings and key archival works created during the last ten years chronicle a chapter of personal loss and acceptance. Encompassing both galleries of East End Arts, Riverhead, NY, the exhibition begins in the cluster of farm-house rooms of the Main Gallery progressing to the open space of the West Gallery.
My unstretched paintings reach high and wide. Stained sections of drop cloth canvas dangle telltale threads from their seams. Irregular downpours of color buckle the patched surfaces. Crisp colored-pencil lines float amongst radiant circles and stripes. Together they test the roiling flows.
I trade experimental methods between my intimate works on stitched paper and the larger canvases. Activated by color, each painting ultimately has its own improvised story. My “Sentence Structure” photographs of partially revealed hand-written journals examine the elusive process of self-reflection. At the center of the exhibition, pages of my artist’s book, “The Garden” are nailed to the wall emphatically unfurling messages of the heart.
A series of conversations and performances will take place in the galleries during the exhibition. Details are forthcoming.
Anne Sherwood Pundyk is showing new work in a group exhibition opening January 2024 at Art Access Gallery, Columbus, OH. Her recent solo exhibitions include TheBrownStoneArt, Brooklyn, NY; Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY; Adah Rose Gallery, Kensington, MD; Queens College Art Center, Queens, NY; and Susan Eley Fine Art, New York, NY. Selected group shows include The Works Museum, Newark, OH; Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, NY; Pierogi Gallery, New York, NY; VSOP Projects, Greenport, NY; The University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, CT; and Art Access, Columbus, OH. Her work has been acquired by Anthony Grant, Katie Couric, and Cy Twombly, among others. Institutional collections with her work include Barclay’s Bank, State Street Bank, The New School, Franklin Furnace, and Denison University. Her work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, artcritical, The Brooklyn Rail and The Washington Post.