Artist’s Statement
I have practiced this collage and painting combination continuously for over twenty years, usually as a method of experimenting with visual ideas on a small scale, as investigations towards the making of larger paintings. It’s only really in the last couple of years that I have appreciated the commercial value of these long practiced disciplines, and sought to create these works as finished exercises in themselves.
The smaller scale allows for more rapid decision making in the execution of the work; the collage material is contemporary and its content is wide ranging – the Exhibition has familiar themes of mine, architecture, and landscape, questions of a spiritual and philosophical nature, the continuous redesigning of our contemporary space and ideas relative to these issues. In this format I can explore intuitive freedoms as well as more formal and traditional issues of image making; I enjoy the tensions between the two approaches which allow me continuous surprises in the results.
EDWARD BOWEN
The Exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Edward’s late sister, Diane Bowen.