Natasha Bowdoin
Power Flower, 2021
Acrylic on cut wood panel and wall
M.D. Anderson Biology Building
Made possible by Rice University’s Department of Facilities, Engineering and Planning
Known for her cut paper, collage-based work and her large-scale, immersive installations, Bowdoin investigates the potential intersections of the visual and the literary, channeling the experience of reading into the activity of drawing, while reimagining our relationship to the environment.
Power Flower is a celebration of nature. This engaging, wall-sized installation of brightly colored, cut and painted organic forms, calls forth an unruly garden, teeming with life. Abundant with dizzying patterns inspired by florals and vegetation, the painting is interwoven with motifs reminiscent of turtle shells, fish scales, snake skin and moth wings.
The result generates a visually lush landscape that appears in flux as it grows along Anderson Hall. Interested in how artists and naturalists have sought to understand, identify, depict, and define the natural world over time, Bowdoin here creates a spacious ecosystem that resists easy containment and immediate identification. Power Flower is a commemoration of the natural world, both real and imagined. It embodies exuberance and intensity while conveying an ecologically-minded message, encouraging viewers to consider their own connections to the landscape around them.
About the Artist: Natasha Bowdoin (b. 1981, West Kennebunk, ME) is a graduate of the Tyler School of Art (MFA in Painting, 2007) and Brandeis University (BA in classics and studio art, 2003). Bowdoin has held a number of artist residencies including at the Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts Houston (2008-2010), the Roswell AIR Program (2013) and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (2012). Bowdoin has had numerous gallery and museum exhibitions over the past decade throughout the United States and Europe, including recent solo exhibitions: In the Night Garden at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth (2020- 21), Sideways to the Sun at the Moody Center for the Arts (2019) and Maneater at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA (2018-20). Bowdoin lives and works in Houston, and teaches studio art at Rice University.