Roy Dowell
Exhibition Dates: Wednesday, March 1 - Sunday, April 23, 2017
Opening reception: Friday, March 3, 6-8pm
Roy Dowell
Roy Dowell is a contemporary painter of myths and symbols. His artistic practice separates real objects and events from the language traditionally used to describe them, creating new, layered meanings.
Dowell is a maker and thinker. His paintings empower viewers to exercise freely associative language and experience. What is depicted is a "frank" assessment of the subject matter. Dowell intuitively produces work that is celebratory, playful, colorful, and generous. His paintings are mystical recordings of the human trace.
On the occasion of Roy Dowell’s exhibition at 1969, the Gallery will publish an online catalog, featuring images of all nine paintings completed in 2016-2017 for the exhibition, an essay by Los Angeles Times art critic David Pagel and a transcribed conversation over Scotch between Dowell and painter Alexander Kroll.
Roy Dowell was born in Bronxville, New York and grew up in California. He Attended the California College of the Arts and Crafts in Oakland and received his BFA in 1973 and his MFA in 1975 both from the California Institute of the Arts. He currently works and lives in Los Angeles with his husband of 43 years, the artist Lari Pittman. Dowell's work is in the collections of the Museums of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, the Berkley and Oakland Museum of Art as well as the HAMMER Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and numerous others. Dowell has received a Getty Fellowship as well as a number of other grants.
His work has been presented in one-person exhibitions at the Fawbush, Curt Marcus and Lennon/Weinberg Galleries in New York and at the Rosamund Felsen, Margo Leavin and Tif Sigfrids Galleries in Los Angeles as well as the James Harris Gallery in Seattle. Dowell has traveled extensively, most often in Mexico where he maintains a house and studio. The influences of folk art, crafts and the world's history of objects and decoration are major factors in the development of Dowell's visual vocabulary.