John Cowen

What was your journey into art, how did you come to be an artist?

I’ve always drawn and painted. I remember drawing cartoons and making comic strips when I was at school. At college a tutor introduced me to the School of  London artists: Bacon, Freud, Auerbach etc, and it was their work that pushed me to thinking more seriously about my own art practice. I went on to university and studied Fine Art. After graduating in 2000 I moved to London, got a job, and spent two years continuing to make artwork and applying for MA courses.

During that time,  I got more involved in graphic design and websites, which were just starting to take off. One thing led to another and I found myself in a long career working as a UX designer and art director while my art fell by the wayside.

After many years of wanting to get back to my art practice but never quite managing it - in 2017 I finally did. I initially started making work again simply as a creative outlet away from the computer.

I’m an environmentalist and a deep concern about the climate crisis and health of the planet informs my day to day existence. Unsurprisingly, it quickly became a dominant focus of my work and is a primary reason for me to keep making work that has relevance today.

Rewilding 1 by John Cowen

Spending so many years working in creative fields has been a great opportunity and I’m sure made the transition back to a fine art practice easier. It’s also given me the experience and confidence around marketing, communicating with audiences and collectors, together with the ability to treat my art practice as a professional occupation.

What ideas are you exploring in your work?

My output is firmly rooted in our current epoch, which is suggested to be called the Anthropocene, the age of man - because we have had such a significant impact on the planet, it will be recorded in geological history. 

All my pieces center around depictions of “the city,” which I use as a metaphor for everything humans have had an impact on. Farmland, fishing, reservoirs, managed forests, mines or pollution - there is almost nowhere on Earth that has not seen some level of impact by humans. Even uninhabited places are being negatively affected by pollution and global heating.

While these concerns drive my work - the pieces themselves convey a sense of beauty and hope. It shows the symbiotic relationship between the natural world and our built environments. It reminds people that adapting our lifestyles to be more sustainable is not just about giving up luxuries and cutting back - it is about preserving and restoring incredible beauty all around us. 

There’s a movement called ‘Rewilding’, which seeks to reestablish the dominance of nature as an antidote to the effects of the Anthropocene. My paintings focus on this movement.  The surfaces are made up of colour and chaos. The marks represent the resurgence of nature and how it is intertwined with people, culture, religion, philosophies and technologies. All these great things we have created as a species existing in a magnificently rich, chaotic and above all sustainable ecosystem

Lapten by John Cowen

Can you tell us more about your process?

I always feel like I should be able to give a list of my sketchbooks and preparatory material. But I don’t actually do anything like that. I just start painting or drawing and figure everything out as I go! I like to be surprised by the work. 

I do research indirectly through general reading around nature and environment but it’s rare that I tackle very specific subjects within the work. There are two books that I consider particularly influential to everything I do. The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells - which gives a chilling worst-case scenario picture of the near future on Earth. And Feral by George Monbiot, which shows a more positive future through the uptake of rewilding and embracing the dominance of nature.

While the paintings might look consistent, with a familiar pattern of mark making - I build up the patterns and colours differently each time. Every time I start a new work, I look at earlier paintings, thinking to myself - how the hell did I do that? It’s definitely a process of trial and error. Error is probably the wrong word, because it’s the missteps that often introduce the most exciting marks and progressions that I’d never have got to intentionally.

Typically I only have one or two artworks on the go at any one time. Once I start a piece I’m quite obsessive about working on it until it’s finished - I’ve got no interest in starting a new piece while another is unfinished.

How has your work evolved over the years?

When I started making art again I very consciously chose materials and techniques that were readily accessible and that allowed me to grow my art practice around the day job.

Starting with ink on paper made it easy to pick up the work even for short periods. The detailed nature of the drawings also meant I didn’t need to be constantly thinking about and assessing the work in progress. Drawing became a rather meditative process. Over a few months of making the first drawings I came to understand what they meant to me and what the city represented about our relationship with nature.

The ambition of the drawings grew and I worked at a larger scale and for longer periods. But there is a physical restriction on how long I can spend doing such detailed work and I started looking for other approaches which would be less physically demanding. 

Love not man the less by John Cowen

Painting was a fairly obvious medium, albeit a daunting one as I’d not painted in almost 20 years. It’s really not like riding a bike - it took me a long time to get comfortable painting again!

Figuring out how to represent the drawings in painted form did take some time. I think their success is being true to the materials. Paint is a different language to drawing and allows me to tell the same story in a different way.

The paintings are all acrylic on canvas or, occasionally, board. I make some works on paper that combine painted and drawn areas which bridges the two parts of my practice.

For a long time the drawings were simply black ink on paper. More recently I’ve been using coloured ink and exploring different paper stocks. Because my work is so focused on environment and sustainability, I’m always looking to use the most sustainable materials I can.

I’ve been collaborating recently with a French artist Gregoire Fournier who makes his own vegetable inks. These have introduced a couple of gorgeous colours to recent drawings. I’ve also discovered the paper supplier G.F Smith, who produce several paper types that have a perfect surface for me - similar to a cartridge paper but with a bit more character, and are environmentally friendly, made with post consumer waste and 90% of the water returned (clean!) to the river.

I have a love of simply making art for its own sake, I love the physical sensation of dragging a pen or brush across a surface and the almost unlimited potential of what you can do with that. While I love to experiment with materials and techniques, I’ve consciously kept the current work within a familiar palette and range of mark making. It creates an immersive experience, with clear relationships and dialogue between pieces when they’re shown together. 

Do you have a favourite quote?

I don’t know how inspirational it actually is (ironically) but Thomas Edison: “Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration”

Which art gallery do you never tire of visiting?

For pure atmosphere I never tire of the National Gallery. The whole experience of the architecture and being amongst so many great works of art and the sense of history is rather special. It’s hard picking a favourite from that collection, I’d probably choose one of their Caravaggio’s, perhaps ‘Salome receives the head of John the Baptist’. It’s impossible to look at a Caravaggio painting without thinking about his life story. The history of controversy, brilliance and violence, makes the work that much more fascinating to me.

On any trip to London I’d also want to visit Tate Modern to see Los Moscos by Mark Bradford. It’s abstract, but has a strong sense of showing an aerial view of a city. I also feel a tension over whether it’s showing something beautiful or apocalyptic. It’s a painting I can find myself standing in front of for long periods of time and has definitely been an influence on my work.

Sophora Landscape John Cowen

Which 3 artists do you love at the moment ?

Three artists that I’ve discovered through Instagram in the last year: 

Tom Cartmill who I discovered via his series of Lockdown Drawings. They’re beautiful fragments of paper, collaged and scored to create rich objects with a sense of weight and history from simple materials and processes.

Hanna ten Doorkaat. Her obsessive mark making has obvious ties to my own drawing practice - but I also enjoy her exploration of materials, using paper bags and crumpled surfaces. I like the contrast between the precision of her mark making with the more careless and sculpted surfaces.

Adebayo Bolaji. His painting The Opening popped up in my feed and I instantly loved it. He’s not an artist I know that much about - but if it’s just for the colour palettes and energy in the paintings I always enjoy his work. His Instagram feed is also a masterclass in branding. Not just his artwork but the way he describes the works and presents himself is entirely cohesive and artworks in their own right. His whole personality and dress seems entirely intertwined with his work.

What is the most memorable thing someone has said about your work?

“I can’t believe you’ve done this.”

This was from an old work colleague who came to visit the studio. He had seen my work on Instagram but was really surprised by the impact of the work when seen in real life. It’s always great when someone says they like your work, but when you see firsthand a genuinely powerful emotional reaction it’s truly rewarding.

See John’s website https://johncowen.co.uk/
Follow on Instagram @john_cowen_art