Biography of Laura Owens
The distinctive work of the American painter Laura Owens is invariably imbued with a sense of pleasure and fantasy. Not one to tackle the prevalent and contemporary theories of art, Owens' work is naturally blessed with depth, beauty, and singularity. Her careful technique is offset by her ability to express an unburdened, joyful sense of experimentation in her canvases.
Graduating from Rhode Island School of Design and the California Institute of the Arts, Owens has based most of her working career in Los Angeles. Much of her work has a distinctive openness and airiness about it despite the fact that the works are teeming with life, often with an abundance of animals and plants. Owens herself described her approach to her work as a "matter of fact way in order to take some of the preciousness or exclusiveness out of the history of the practice." Yet it is easy to mistake the apparent simplicity and miss the more layered and complex background in her work as she often incorporates a wide variety of art historical references and painterly techniques.
Born in 1970 in Ohio, Owens has become well-known for her sumptuous artist books and limited edition screenprints. Owens has had prominent exhibitions in the Camden Arts Centre in London in 2006, the Kunstmuseum in Bonn, Germany in 2011, and has even exhibited at Art Unlimited in Switzerland in 2012. In 2014 Owens exhibited pieces at MoMA in New York as part of their Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World exhibition.
