112 http://www.AmericanArtCollector.com
1UPCOMING SHOW PREVIEW / BAINBRIDGE ISLAND MUSEUM OF ART
3/14-6/7 Bainbridge Island, WAS
culptor Peregrine O’Gormley has a distinct style, one of
simple shapes that come together to form sleek, semi-abstract
representations of the animal kingdom, from insects to snakes to
rabbits, to even humans. Undoubtedly, though, the most frequently
sculpted subjects are birds. Throughout O’Gormley’s oeuvre of
sculptures—some bronze, some wood—you can glimpse creatures
like falcons, owls, robins and wrens.
“Somehow bird forms seem to be an almost common language,
one that we can relate to on so many levels,” says O’Gormley, who
resides in Washington. “I’d say that bird imagery tends to stimulate
a sense of beauty, simplicity and our own desire to fly, literally and
figuratively. Though I work with many subjects and have reverence
for each, I do find that birds, raptors in particular, come up again
and again as the subject in my mind’s eye when I have something
I hope to communicate.”
One of the bronzes in his forthcoming exhibition at the
Bainbridge Island Museum of Art in Washington depicts an owl
from a perspective not often seen. In Scythe, the form of an owl
diving toward its prey is visible against a plate of shiny gray,
appearing as though the owl is pushing through a sheet of softPEREGRINE O’GORMLEYSoaring
2