James Owens

James Owens crafts eerie in-betweens, paintings that hover on the boundary of recognisability and the unfamiliar. His works deny viewers the instant gratification of knowing, inviting a slow look, a long glance, and an intimate reflection. Abstracted and blurred just out of ascertainability, each work is a space to search, to experience, to accept unknowing, to weave stories of supposed explanation for our own comforts, to live alongside the undefinable. With plants overgrowing manmade structures, creeping slowly to consume the frame, Owens creates a temple to post-apocalyptic self-discovery as he searches for connection and enlightenment through repetition and abstraction upon the canvas. 

James Owens (b. 1995) received his BA in Illustration from Camberwell College of Arts in 2018. That same year, he received the Evening Standard Art Prize, in conjunction with his display at the National Gallery in London. He has exhibited globally, in cities such as London, New York, Seoul, Edinburgh, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels, Los Angeles, and Düsseldorf. Owens lives and works in London.