FRANK OWEN
Frank Owen, Corona/Carone, 1999, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 92 inches
Frank Owen will exhibit new monumental and small scale paintings on November 3 through December 5, 2001. The artist's last solo show at the gallery in 1998 juxtaposed early work and current work. This show focuses exclusively on his work of the past three years.
Frank Owen, Slate Cutter, 2000, acrylic on board, 49 x 39 inches	During this period of time the artist has pursued two different directions in his work: a series he calls the Venetians, inspired by the sumptuous coloration of glass beads; and paintings inspired by nature of the Adirondacks in which the artist includes and embeds images of leaves, sticks, stones between layers of paint.
For Owen the Venetian paintings are a visual equivalent of the pleasure principle. They are what he calls "the extravagant deployment" of all the things he knows how to do in paint, and "an excuse to do them." In the '70s Owen invented his own system of painting, building a skin of many layers of paint on the surface of a canvas, a unique system. The skin of paint is built "in verso;" the first layer is, in fact, the top or surface layer of the finished painting; the final coat is the layer that touches the canvas.	Frank Owen, Gate, 1999, acrylic on canvas, 112 x 75 inches
Frank Owen, Between Seasons I, 2001 acrylic on canvas. 83 x 92 inches
The Venetian paintings are the most coloristically saturated paintings Owen has created. Inspiration for the artist's wide-ranging palette comes from Venice and the works of Titian, Tintoretto, Carlos Scarpa, as well as the historical glass of Murano. The Venetians are complex arrangements of large "bead-like" shapes stacked one upon another, "luxurious heaps," as the artist calls them, whirling through the field of the canvas. Owen constructs these paintings as complex "arrangements not unlike looking at a collection of glass beads," in adventurous fashion. While spontaneous in appearance, the Venetian paintings are meticulously calculated and constructed before Owen embarks on the eight to twelve weeks it takes him to complete a 7x7 foot canvas. In this on-going series of paintings, the artist also addresses the concept of collecting, be it paintings, glass, or as he says, "voluptuously beautiful baubles." Not only is collecting an exciting and spiritually enriching endeavor, but these paintings about collecting are exciting for the artist to paint!
Frank Owen, Plank Trap, 2000, acrylic on board, 49 x 39 inches	Owen has for many years pursued a track of painting that responds to the local environment of the Adirondacks and its richness of nature. His nature paintings--close up and close in views--infused with the rugged mountainscape that surrounds him, are his personal response to 19th Century American luminists. In these abstract paintings, landscape (in microcosm) is the frame of reference. Leaves, sticks, stones, visual haiku that suggest the larger landscape, appear through layers of paint. As if peering through water and discovering pond life below, one peers into Owens's paintings and discovers the mysteries nature has to offer. It is the nature paintings with their visual poetry that Owen now paints in large and small scale.
Frank Owen, Between Seasons II, 2001 acrylic on canvas, 84 x 80 inches
Owens's paintings are brim-full of ideas, energy, color and movement. He stretches the definition of abstract painting to new levels with each new series. Frank Owen was born in Kalispell, Montana in 1939. He received his B.A. and M.S. degrees from the University of California at Davis. He was awarded the University of California Regents Fellowship in 1967-68 and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in 1978-79 and 1989-90.
Frank Owen, Threaders: Topaz & Lapis, 2001 acrylic on canvas, 84 x 84 inches
His work has been widely shown in this country at The Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut; The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock; The Art Institute of Chicago; Bayly Art Museum, University of Virginia, Charlottesville; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Center for the Arts, Vero Beach, Florida; Francis Colburn Gallery, University of Vermont, Burlington; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; Decker Gallery, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois; Lake Placid Art Center, New York; Madison Art Center, Wisconsin; Maier Museum of Art, Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Lynchburg, Virginia; Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; Oklahoma City Art Museum, Oklahoma; Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and abroad at Berlin Kunstmuseum, Germany.
His work is represented in numerous museum and public collections, among them The Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; Elvehjem Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Missouri; Madison Art Center, Wisconsin; The St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri; and Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Frank Owen resides in Keene Valley, New York.
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