Whether she’s painting, singing, or working with a client, London-based artist and occupational therapist Amanda Rowe believes it’s important to put creativity at the core of her work.
“I do use art with a lot of my clients,” she says at her home studio in east London, colourful images of her most recent muse, Nova Scotia, decorating her walls.
“I think it’s a very powerful medium. I work with clients with a lot of stress. It’s amazing, actually, how much somebody just expresses in an image very, very quickly (without having) to say anything.”
Although Rowe, a regular on the London Artists' Studio Tour, has been painting regularly since 1999 and has shown her work in numerous galleries, she understands that self-expression through art isn’t only for professionals. In fact, if you ask her, too many people with misconceptions about the creative process are missing out on what their own creativity can offer them.
“I feel like maybe people need to broaden their idea of what creative expression is; we shouldn’t pigeon hole it so much,” she explains. “Creative expressions are who you are, they’re just a different medium working with different materials. Whether it’s writing an article or dealing with your kids when they wake up in the morning, everything you bring you can do that in an artful way. You can either enjoy the process and dig into it or you can drag your (butt) through the whole thing. I really believe you have to follow what resonates.”
That’s the philosophy fuelling Rowe’s creative process and, unless you’ve also experienced her therapy techniques, you can find it at the core of her paintings and music.
If you haven’t seen Rowe’s art, she’s perhaps most well known for painting figures and often likes to paint in series. The Mannequin People has previously been shown at Western University’s McIntosh Gallery and It’s in the Bag — which included interviews digging into whether people’s handbags could provide insights into their personality — caught the attention of curators in Woodstock and Montreal.
More recently, Rowe found inspiration in Nova Scotia during a trip to the east coast in 2008. It’s those paintings — primarily landscapes in oil, acrylic and wax — that will be part of her next exhibition at Sarnia’s Gallery In The Grove September 18 - October 22.
“To me, I went there and it felt like home,” Rowe says. “There’s a really nice soft energy about it. It’s different. It’s comfortable. It feels very colourful there. Maybe because of the Celtic music and people are just very welcoming.”
Rowe’s Nova Scotia adventure and her desire to try her hand at landscapes led to about 75 paintings. After enjoying the show in Sarnia though, Rowe says she’ll turn her attention to a Celtic music CD she’s also been working on.
“What I have been thinking about is how much singing music is almost like just another medium,” she says. “Like you could switch from oil to watercolours or you could switch to vocals and playing the piano. It’s another form of expression but it’s the same part of me that’s being expressed whether it’s through music or through paint. I find the two inform one another quite a bit.”
Rowe has trained as a classical musician and has recorded a couple of songs with local songwriter Steven Hardy. Music is another outlet for Rowe’s creativity, a chance for her to let her inspiration take the lead.
“They’ve always kind of happened together,” she says about her passions. “The thing that I discovered for myself is whether (it’s) the work I’m doing with my clients or whether it’s painting or whether it’s singing, they go through the same sort of phases together. I found that interesting because I thought that process relates to what you’re doing in that area, but what actually ends up happening is that things happen kind of together in sync.”
Rowe’s singing and painting have also been combined in a music video you can find on her website, amandarowe.ca.
CMontanini@postmedia.com
Twitter: @LondonerChris
The current feature, What's Your Story?, reveals distinctly different lives through the creative visions of six female artists: Marilyn Conklin, Roberta Cory, Linda Fried, Amanda Rowe, Laurie Seaman and Rosemary Sloot.
Although one cannot quickly draw comparisons between the works, the underlying theme of the exhibit is implied by the simplistic title. The artists intend to portray the lifestyles of various individuals and communities, as well as to inspire viewers to apply their own personal experiences, or their own stories, to these works.
The women contributing their talents to the exhibit have each chosen a dramatic piece by another artist to accompany their work. In addition to the art, short essays explain the parallels between the pieces, and reveal the roots of inspiration.
Laurie Seaman, a London native, is eager to portray the lives of seemingly simplistic individuals, because she recognizes the complexities that reside below their surfaces. She illustrates the spirit of the individual through pieces such as "Teresa," "Prostitute," "Gerry," "Butcher" and "Chambermaids."
Rosemary Sloot blends hair, feathers, shells and bones with oil on canvas to convey memorable and compelling images. She strives to seamlessly integrate images of the natural environment with pictures of humankind through her collection of paintings entitled "The Idea of Evolution." Her use of shadows across rippling turquoise waters is particularly appealing, offering a mesmerizing quality.
Arguably the most dramatic pieces are found in "Proxemics and Body Language On Stage," consisting of a plethora of related paintings by Amanda Rowe. Her works convey a striking contrast of creams and peaches on dark backgrounds, which present the stories of romantic interludes and casual conversations. Rowe intends for the viewer to question what is real, and what has been created or perceived through the interaction of mannequin-like figures across smooth surfaces.
If academic stress has consumed you, seize a distraction by immersing yourself in the depicted lives of strangers, conveyed by six talented women. So rather than arriving early for the bus that is destined to be late, spare a few minutes, and treat yourself to the creativity that these artists have to offer.
The What's Your Story? exhibition will be featured at McIntosh Gallery until Apr. 6.
Juror's Choice Award
“Amanda’s raw and confident canvas invites us into her world while revealing little of it”
Michael Gibson and Rod Demerling
Jurors Choice Award
Woodstock Art Gallery
In “It’s in the Bag,” Amanda takes us into the world of women through one of their favourite fashion accessories: the handbag. While we rarely get to see the contents, the purses are almost never opened; we are left with images that evoke narratives that stop short of supplying answers. Instead, they suggest questions about the duality inherent in women’s identity and complexity of their sexuality.
These paintings taken together are both a celebration of women of all ages and a reflection of the baggage that we all carry. The playful sexuality of the youthful women is contrasted with and complemented by the confident posture and self-assured expressions of older women.
Do women use purses to express their individuality or are they part of a fashion uniform that society dictates? In some of the paintings the characters hold practical or distinctive purses in confident poses while looking directly at the viewer. In others twin figures hold the same purses to match the same outfit while standing in the same position.
Do purses reveal identity or do they conceal that which is private? Women cling to their handbags, at times with clenched fists. At other times purses are held deliberately to conceal the face. The darker side of the image is explored when the handbag seems to represent the emotional and psychological baggage that may present itself at different times and stages of our lives. Some characters seem particularly weighed down with the cumbersome heaviness of their bags. Another seems to be pondering the choice of purses, apparently unaware of their similarity, perhaps suggesting the regularity with which our ‘baggage’ confronts us in life; while it may look different, it is always the same.
Amanda moves from the general to specific both in terms of style and message. She uses a variation of painting styles and palettes to express a range of meaning, just as women choose different purses to reflect a particular mood or to accessorize the day’s ensemble. Her use of vivid, bold and brilliant colours is at once liberating and confining. The various shades of pink suggest the joyous playfulness of youth as well as restricting cultural stereotypes. Paintings in which the characters seem more comfortable exposing their bodies than showing their faces or the contents of their purses challenge the viewer and the social norms.
In the more minimalist paintings, the absence of detail seems to enhance the commonality of women’s experience. This spare composition is often used in the representation of twin figures who suggest the dichotomy inherent in our reflections: as individuals and as a gender, are we what we appear to be? As the paintings become more clearly representational, the stories seem to narrow, perhaps to illustrate that individual identity has not been completely lost to the sea of cultural expectations.
Jacques McCarthy
Sept 14 - Oct 29, 2006
“Coinciding with the city-wide music festival, this exhibition features women artists who have contributed to London’s Cultural scene.”
London artist Amanda Rowe paints in her Princess Ave. studio as her dog, Mu, critiques. Rowe's work will be featured in the upcoming London Artists' Studio Tour 20th anniversary exhibition at the Art Exchange which opens March 5. (CRAIG GLOVER, The London Free Press)
