Peter Owen
tubabada@yahoo.com
Providence, RI
tubabada@yahoo.com
Providence, RI
Artist statement:
I started this project in order to view l.a. in a
way that I felt was counter to the typical
experience. Los Angeles sprawl makes us
dependent on cars, therefore the landscape
is framed by the windshield. I recorded the
city from the street level, on foot, a plein-air
painter transplanted into the grimy and
smog-glazed neighborhoods of Los
Angeles. All of the drawings are done in
alleyways, on sidewalks, in parking lots, at
various times of day and night. The locations
affect the markmaking - uncomfortable
areas produce sketchy or nervous lines. And
the travel affects them as well: a dozen
panels in a backpack rub together and wear
off areas of surfaces, revealing a lower
strata of information, a previous location. My
paintings deviate from plein-air painting in
that each panel is a layered recording. The
images are superimposed on one another,
an accretion of landscape.
After five years of using public space and city
imagery as a platform to create paintings
and drawings I’ve pulled back from working
stictly outdoors and have transitioned into an
indoor studio practice. Two factors that
moved me towards this decision have been
the harsh weather changes and the desire
to work on a larger scale. The paintings I’m
working on currently are mash-ups of the
areas I’ve lived and traveled through New
York, Los Angeles and presently Providence
and greater New England. Even though the
lines lie exposed and naked on the paper,
the compositions and layered imagery build
to a mystery that is at the same time
accessible and hidden. The paint drops in
like anchors at various points of the
compositions, the line work reads as mixed
up folk tales of spaces lived in. From a
distance, they look almost like sidewalk
stains, but up close a multiplicity of lines
refer to various places, tangled together.
You can never get the whole, true story of a
specific part of town, each place holds the
varied experiences and memories of
thousands of people. These paintings and
drawings offer small observations of
different spaces, clues about the variety of
uses, truths, and histories of place.
I started this project in order to view l.a. in a
way that I felt was counter to the typical
experience. Los Angeles sprawl makes us
dependent on cars, therefore the landscape
is framed by the windshield. I recorded the
city from the street level, on foot, a plein-air
painter transplanted into the grimy and
smog-glazed neighborhoods of Los
Angeles. All of the drawings are done in
alleyways, on sidewalks, in parking lots, at
various times of day and night. The locations
affect the markmaking - uncomfortable
areas produce sketchy or nervous lines. And
the travel affects them as well: a dozen
panels in a backpack rub together and wear
off areas of surfaces, revealing a lower
strata of information, a previous location. My
paintings deviate from plein-air painting in
that each panel is a layered recording. The
images are superimposed on one another,
an accretion of landscape.
After five years of using public space and city
imagery as a platform to create paintings
and drawings I’ve pulled back from working
stictly outdoors and have transitioned into an
indoor studio practice. Two factors that
moved me towards this decision have been
the harsh weather changes and the desire
to work on a larger scale. The paintings I’m
working on currently are mash-ups of the
areas I’ve lived and traveled through New
York, Los Angeles and presently Providence
and greater New England. Even though the
lines lie exposed and naked on the paper,
the compositions and layered imagery build
to a mystery that is at the same time
accessible and hidden. The paint drops in
like anchors at various points of the
compositions, the line work reads as mixed
up folk tales of spaces lived in. From a
distance, they look almost like sidewalk
stains, but up close a multiplicity of lines
refer to various places, tangled together.
You can never get the whole, true story of a
specific part of town, each place holds the
varied experiences and memories of
thousands of people. These paintings and
drawings offer small observations of
different spaces, clues about the variety of
uses, truths, and histories of place.
| untitled 10” x 12 ½” ink, graphite, ash, house paint, coffee |
| untitled 12” x 14” ink, graphite, ash, house paint, coffee |
| untitled 10” x 13” ink, graphite, ash, house paint, coffee |
| untitled 32” x 40” graphite, oil paint, coffee |
| untitled 32” x 40” graphite, oil paint, coffee |
| untitled 38” x 52” graphite, oil paint, coffee |