Untitled
Laura Owens
American, born 1970
2003
A small collage of cut-and-pasted painted paper with watercolor and pencil on paper in which Owens assembles simplified yellow‑green leaf shapes and dark brown trunks into a playful, abstracted tree that questions the boundaries between painting, drawing, and collage.
What strikes you is the childlike economy of shapes—cloudlike yellow and green cutouts floating in front of a finely penciled horizontal ground, their torn edges and soft washes set against a bold, organic brown trunk that reads like a silhouette.
By combining painted paper fragments, watercolor washes, and drawn grounds, Owens collapses media distinctions and models a loose, immediate approach to surface and form that helped nudge contemporary painting toward collage, play, and everyday pictorial language.
Medium
Cut-and-pasted painted paper with watercolor and pencil on paper
Dimensions
10 1/2 x 7 1/8" (26.7 x 18.1 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection Gift
Accession
2607.2005
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
