The Lionheart Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibit Tangible Lines by Barbara Owen from March 4 to April 30, 2017. Tangible Lines is the most recent interpretation of Owen’s sculptural forms and flat works composed entirely of cut paper. Owen, who divides her time between Pawtucket, R.I., and Brooklyn, N.Y., creates drawings in three dimensions—literally.

One thinks of paper as a material traditionally used to draw “upon.” Owen flips this tradition on its head by using the paper as the line itself. Just as one chooses a pencil or chalk for its fine or fat line, Owen achieves this same variation by “drawing” with an X-ACTO knife.

With this in mind, Owen has developed a body of work focusing on the line as physical and presenting it as a form. In these highly colorful, intricate and delicate compositions, the artist is experimenting with depth, superposition and inviting the viewer to examine the subtle boundary between flat work and the third dimension. Using hand-painted paper, the artist meticulously cuts out her iconic shapes, leaving them whole or retaining a simple boundary, before assembling them into compositions that she considers drawings in space, the end result being colorful and vibrant abstractions.

Tangible Lines will feature a mix of installation pieces as well as framed pieces. All of the works are new and created specifically for the exhibit. Inspired by the artist’s previous body of work, the “Bloom” series, typically oil on canvas, this new paper series takes the Bloom shapes as a starting point. “You might not recognize that initial Bloom shape, but it’s there,” said the artist, whose work has been featured in many curated and juried exhibitions in the Northeast. “If you look at the evolution of my work, I’m a painter who then turned to paper as a means of continuing to develop this language, the Bloom language.”

The outcome—quietly incandescent like the lyrical abstraction of Thelonius Monk—will be on view in the exhibit Tangible Lines, running from March 4 to April 30 at The Lionheart Gallery in Pound Ridge, N.Y. The opening reception is March 4, from 4 to 7 p.m., with a snow date of March 5. A talk by the artist is scheduled for 4 p.m. on April 8.