FERNBERGER

7. Elana Bowsher at Sea View

Blurring the boundary between figuration and organic abstraction, Elana Bowsher explores the body through the lens of the pelvic bone. Born in San Francisco and schooled at UCLA, the Los Angeles-based artist beautifully blends the anatomical with the abstract in her skeletal interpretations. Inspired by the symbolic language of artists Hilma af Klint and Georgia O’Keeffe, luminescent paintings such as Plume II at the fair suggest a sense of mystery and awe. Looking as much like a flower, feather, shell or sponge as it does a bone, the subject of her painting reminds us that everything evolved from a primordial soup, which contained the building blocks of the first forms of life on earth.