Boo Saville’s color field paintings are only a portion of her oeuvre, but are perhaps the most indicative of her interest in divergent models of aesthetic exploration. The abstractions are achieved by layering paint over time, slowly sanding and cleaning each dry layer of paint before applying the next. The process is driven by instinct depending on the situation of a given day influenced by mood, emotion, light, and music. The paintings serve as a record of the days and of the decisions Saville has taken to get to the finished product. As soon as the abstracts start to resemble a ‘painting’, Saville tends to destroy that gesture within the paint. The abstracts are always tonally neutral and represent the moment before a gesture or a slow recurring dream.
Boo Saville was born in Norwich, England in 1980. She graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2004. Saville was a nominee for the Sovereign Painting Prize in both 2007 and 2011, and in 2008 she worked on a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Saville’s solo exhibitions include ‘Laid Bare’, Martin Summers Fine Art, London (2008), ‘Idolum’, Studio Giangaleazzo Visconti, Milan (2010) and ‘Chimera’, Davidson Contemporary, New York (2017). She has received four separate solo shows at TJ Boulting, London, including ‘Polycephaly’ (2014), and was included in the group exhibition ‘Simulation/Skin’ and 'True Colours' at Newport Street Gallery in London. Saville’s work has been acquired by collections including the Museum of New and Old Art, Tazmania, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Murderme, Soho House and Maramotti collection. She featured in Francesca Gavin’s books ‘Hell Bound: New Gothic Art’ (2008) and ‘100 New Artists’ (2011), and published an edition of etchings, ‘Ghost’, with Other Criteria in 2009. Her most recent edition of prints 'Contact, Merge,Void' were made in collaboration with Manifold Editions in London and are available here.