This summer, SPACE TO BREATHE will hold the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the remarkable British painter Sheila Girling. Held in the centenary of her birth, over 70 of her large scale paintings and collages will hang in Bowhouse, Fife, showcasing her enormous talent as a painter of expressive, vibrant and deeply emotional paintings and collages.

The exhibition will also include important sculptures by the internationally renowned sculptor Sir Anthony Caro, Girling’s lifelong partner. Girling described their marriage as “a 64 year conversation about art” and they both freely admitted her influence on his work. On occasion Girling chose or changed the colours of Caro’s sculptures and often painted them herself. It is an honour to exhibit these two individual yet deeply connected artists side by side, while focussing attention on the woman in this creative partnership.

Girling’s work is a testament to an artistic life led at the centre of both the British and American avant-garde art scene from the 1960s until her death in 2015. Her and Caro’s close circle included the ground-breaking art theorist Clement Greenberg and artists Kenneth Noland, Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler, to name but a few. Girling’s use of colour and abstract form bridge British, European and American mid century influences. And yet when standing in front of her compelling works, one cannot help but admire her artistic individuality, emotional range and immediacy. The large canvasses dazzle in their intensity. They are abstract and yet grounded in figuration, evoking the natural world while expressing the dynamic qualities of the medium itself - be it acrylic on canvas or paper collage.