Claire Oswalt: Draw me a Clock : Broadway East Hampton pop-up location at 87 Newtown Lane

Claire Oswalt

Draw Me a Clock

July 27- August 31

Broadway East Hampton

 Opening Reception Saturday, July 27th
4-7pm

Broadway East Hampton is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new sewn-canvas and acrylic paintings by Austin, Texas and Southampton resident Claire Oswalt.

Despite the elegant washes of paint and the spliced arc of their seams, Oswalt’s latest body of work was born of a difficult moment. Plagued by crippling insomnia, the artist was compelled to question the most basic of foundations.

Oswalt began this series featuring clock faces aiming to not only exorcise the domineering image that taunts the sleepless in their endless night, but to also consider time and consciousness on a metaphysical level. The title of the show, Draw Me A Clock, brings together both elements. Doctors often use The Clock Drawing Test to diagnose a patient's mental stability. The blurred accuracy of Oswalt’s clocks doesn’t seem to suggest faulty thinking, rather a quest for a deeper understanding that pushes beyond the limits of time and space.

Beyond their cathartic power, the clocks also prove successful as a formal device, dividing the picture plane with a rhythmic pacing that guides the artist’s subsequent improvisations. As with her previous bodies of work, Oswalt begins each painting with a small study made from cut-paper and watercolor. Each sewn line on the finished painting mirrors the original collaged contours of the preparatory work, and allows for compositional and chromatic decisions to be made at hand-held scale. These are then executed at full-size. A selection of framed studies is included in the exhibition allowing a visitor to experience this transformation up close.

As we move through the exhibition, we are swept along with Oswalt’s controlled yet oceanic washes of pigment, the sheer physicality of the sewn substrates, and the charged psychology of her recent existential journey.