About the Artist
Visual artist Sandra Bowden has been interpreting Scripture and her own spiritual walk through mixed media for more than forty years. She has been acclaimed as one of the most unique, impressive, and inspiring Christian artists in America. Bowden’s work has been featured in books, magazines, and gallery shows across the United States, Canada, Italy, and Jerusalem.
With over 100 one-person shows, her work is in many collections including the Vatican Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, Brauer Museum, Atwood Museum, the Haifa Museum, and has been featured multiple times in The Kairos Gallery. Sandra was president of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) from 1993–2007 and now serves on the Advisory Committee for the Duke Initiative for Theology and Art.
“My Christian faith has been the driving force behind my art... I look at the making of a piece of art as a kind of doxology, a prayer or conversation with God. I don’t mean this in any mystical way, but my ideas come out of my theology and thoughts about God. I am somewhat of a theologian, but one who translates those interpretations into visual form.”
About the Exhibit
Reflecting the Glory continues Bowden’s conversation with the past paying homage to the icons of western art. This show highlights several gilded encaustic panels that recall iconic paintings from art history. Their distinct shapes identify the celebrated works, but because of their solid gold surface, allow the viewer to delight in the radiance of each panel, while drawing on memory and imagination to fill in the forms. The exhibition also includes multi-panel installations along with several artist’s books that provide a rich three-dimensional dialogue between the works.
“Artists do not merely put on canvas what can be seen. They try to uncover something beyond the range of the eyes. I believe that art is a means to illuminate both the interior life and the exterior world, both seen and unseen. I hope Reflections of Glory will lead those who see the exhibition beyond the edge of their consciousness into a place of splendor, wonder and transcendence.”
Critical Acclaim
— Kevin Buist, the juror for CIVA national exhibition, June 2015, speaking of Altarpiece II "What struck me about the monochrome art pieces is the impossibility of painting God, which is a hot topic given the prohibition of idolatry. Over the ages, artists have remade God in their image, which is an interesting reversal of God making us in his image. In the altarpieces' lush and gorgeous surfaces, which lack a physical image of God yet clearly point to the Creator, Sandra is not making a didactic and pointed reflection of idolatry, but rather her pieces are a vehicle for contemplating this paradox. The viewer is invited to simply relish what is right there on the surface of the empty altarpiece and is allowed to use his or her own imagination to fill in the glorious scene. There is something truly amazing about the idea of the painting that points to the discovery of a wider range of the truth."
— Linda Witte Henke, juror for SOLA: GRACE-FAITH-SCRIPTURE at Good Shepherd Institute, Concordia University, St. Louis, speaking of first place award-winning Reformation Altarpiece"Sandra Bowden’s Reformation Altarpiece speaks with quiet nuance and subtle effect . . . using her own signature gold-leaf encaustic technique to interpret that form in a distinctly abstract way. The resulting patina of the installation’s surface speaks to the mystery of the God too wondrous to be fully named and too mysterious to be completely known… the image of each viewer’s presence is indistinctly reflected on the surface of the work. This connection, this awareness of the wondrous, mysterious relationship between God and humankind, invites not only consideration of who God has been, but also radical openness to who God yet will be."
