Artworks - Tony Owers

A contemplative and meditative man by nature, this latest collection of paintings by Brighton based Tony Owers reflects his own thoughts on the creative process of ‘mark making’ and the frailty of existence. He describes his work as ‘unforced’ and ‘subdued’, words that belie strength of the finished images. He works in encaustic – a medium that dates back to ancient Greece and Egypt, but use by Jasper Johns as recently as the 1950s. It involves the lending of hot beeswax with pigment and working quickly and spontaneously before the medium cools and hardens. This venerable medium is not only made of the most natural of ingredients but results in the most natural earthiness of colours and tactile of finished surface. Encaustic in its production, its work, and final appearance on the canvas all reflect the artist’s beliefs in the power of the natural world and the comparative impermanence of our own place in it. ‘The work is in no sense morbid’, he states, ‘but encourages reflection and contemplation.’ The work is largely process driven and the visual influences are taken from the urban landscape, graffiti and erosion.