SWG
John E. Dowell, Jr.
To Move From Tomorrow's Past, 1979; To Dance Through Time, 1984; To Feel It - Time, 1984
acrylic on canvas, 84" x 20" each
$30,000 each
John Dowell developed the canvases and watercolors in his White series (late 1970s to early 1990s) in conjunction with personal conversations with choreographer Merce Cunningham, whom Dowell admired for his ability to work with time and movement. As a visual artist of 2D works, Dowell was intrigued by his colleagues in dance and music because time was a natural component of their works. But through these personal conversations, Dowell found that although he could not incorporate actual time into his own compositions, he could make the viewer feel time through a sense of distance, movement, and space. Understanding how Cunningham focused on engaging the space in which his dancers moved in his choreography, Dowell correspondingly activates his surfaces with undulating, rhythmic texture punctuated with whispers of strategically placed color to expand the restrictions of his static, 2D plane.
watercolor & ink on paper , 30” x 22” $15,000 (framed)
watercolor & ink on paper , 30” x 22” $15,000 (framed)
"Philadelphia Song," 1981
etching, #50/100, framed to 28" x 23"
$2,400
Minimal composition in red with hand-colored abstract markings connoting music and dance. One of 4 prints from the Philadelphia Portfolio prepared by the Print Center in partnership with the City of Philadelphia, 1981. #50/100. Signed, dated, and numbered lower margin. Etching plate measures 19 x 13 in., sheet measures 24 x 28 in., framed to 28 x 23 in. in narrow gold wood frame with off-white mat under plexi.
An artist and master-printer for more than four decades, John Dowell's fine art prints, paintings and photographs have been featured in more than 50 one-person exhibitions, and represented in the permanent collections of 70 museum and public collections. Among them are the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum of Harlem, Fogg Museum of Harvard University, Yale University Art Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design, Lehigh University Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Art, and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Dowell is a Philadelphia native and Professor Emeritus at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University.