DUALITIES

Paintings by
Tim Bowen

Artist's Statement
These large scale paintings deal with dualities and ambiguities, i.e. physical / spiritual, abstraction / representation, serious / humorous, calm / chaos, simple / complex, deliberate / spontaneous, etc.

I'm attempting to reconcile, unify and balance the tension between these opposing elements, reflecting my specific cultural time and place, while drawing upon and honoring the visual traditions of my predecessors.

This is accomplished by addressing a variety of relevant subject matter and timely issues in a way that suggests the confusion, uncertainty and strangeness which I find present in many areas of our experience. By juxtaposing several sometimes disparate images and utilizing the physical characteristics of the paint in part as metaphor a somewhat cryptic dialogue is established within the borders of the canvas allowing the viewer to interpret and draw his or her own conclusions regarding the meaning of the painting, implied or otherwise.

One aspect of my approach is based on the Hindu concept of Maya, defined by Paramahansa Yogananda as "...the delusory power inherent in the structure of creation. Maya is the principle of relativity, inversion, contrast, duality, oppositional states." This is evidenced by the twofold nature of the painting's content. On the one hand, recognizable imagery is depicted through basic line drawing while the other more painterly properties are essentially non-objective elements. This is similar to a coloring book where a child is free to fill in the page without any apparent relation to the actual picture. In other words, I paint "outside the lines".

As described by inliquid.com - "Layered subject and imagery are revealed on closer inspection of Tim Bowen's brightly colored, seemingly abstract paintings."