Interview with artist Brent Rowley
Brent Rowley is an Arkansas artist who enjoys experimenting with mediums and substrates. He completed his B.A. in Philosophy at Hendrix College and received his M.A. in TESOL from Arkansas Tech University and taught English in the countries of Georgia, Russia and Japan. During his studies and travels, Brent became captivated by classical art and inspired by its color, form and storytelling. His most recent body of work is an exploration of these influences. More of Brent’s work can be found at Boswell Mourot Fine Art in Little Rock and at his website brentjrowley.com.
AAS: Brent, are you originally from Arkansas?
BR: Yeah, I was born in Little Rock and grew up in Russellville. I studied philosophy and art history in undergraduate at Hendrix College. I didn’t know what to do after I graduated, but I wanted to help people and experience other cultures, so I took a volunteer position with Americorps at the American Indian Center of Arkansas. After that I took another volunteer position teaching English in the country of Georgia. That opened the door for me to spend nearly the next ten years living overseas and teaching English. After Georgia I taught in Russia and Japan and eventually got my master’s in TESOL from Arkansas Tech University.
Living abroad was such an important experience for me. It opened up my mind in so many ways. I realized that the day-to-day things we take for granted are contingent. Things don’t have to be done the way we’ve always done them. There’s always another way. I apply that to my art as well as my life.
AAS: When you were growing up, was art something you thought about?
BR: Yes, but I wasn’t really thinking much about Raphael or anything like that as a kid. I started off drawing dinosaurs and insects, you know? My great-grandfather was a painter and I’m sure that seeing his paintings around the house had an impact on me. It wasn’t until later that I really started thinking about art. In high school I got very into the Dadaists and the German Expressionists. Egon Schiele was big for me. I did a lot of self-portraits in his style during that time. My parents were supportive of my art and have always encouraged me. I never heard that I wouldn’t be able to make a living at art from them, but I got the message elsewhere.
In college I studied abroad at Oxford University and took a course in Renaissance art. The next year I did an independent research project funded by Hendrix College, which gave me the opportunity to go to Italy and look in-depth at classical art. I focused on Mannerism, a movement much derided by art historians. I looked at how the seeds of Mannerism were first planted by Michelangelo and Raphael; figures we consider part of the High Renaissance. I love Mannerist painters like Pontormo and Bronzino because their art is both classical and surreal—really off-kilter and strange stuff, but it still follows all the rules of classical art.
AAS: Your recent work often borrows from classic imagery and geometry. Why does that interest you so much?
BR: I steal in the same way that artists have always stolen. Ancient Roman artists borrowed from the Greeks. Renaissance artists stole from ancient Greek and Roman works. Dadaists and pop artists took from everybody under the sun. I’m continuing a rich tradition of blatant thievery. People didn’t like Mannerism because it was derivative of the Renaissance, but there was very little about the Renaissance that was truly original. Shakespeare stole nearly all his plots, you know? But it’s how he said it that mattered.
I Remember That I Wanted to Inhale Myself in Order to Prove That I Was Alive and to See if I Liked Being Alive, and if So Why, 32” x 26”, acrylic, alcohol ink, and oil on aluminum
As for the geometry, in 2021 at the Sarasvati Artist Residency, I was trying out all sorts of styles, solidifying my artistic voice. I stumbled on the book The Painter’s Secret Geometry by Charles Bouleau. The book is dense, but he shows how artists throughout history have used geometry to create their compositions. It was eye-opening to look at art history through this lens. I found his schematics beautiful and started incorporating them into my work. I expanded on this by incorporating geometrical structures from different cultures in my art. For example, my painting I Remember That I Wanted to Inhale Myself in Order to Prove That I Was Alive and to See if I Liked Being Alive, and if So Why uses the geometry from an Islamic doorway.
Since then, I’ve gotten into the whole process and philosophy of sacred geometry. There’s something beautiful about how Chartres Cathedral could be designed with just a straightedge and a compass. Measuring out geometry on a surface is a meditative process for me—a little bit of calm before the storm.
The rest of my painting process is very chaotic. I like seeing how far I can push my materials. The geometry gives a framework to these experiments. I want to create a structure that can tolerate/absorb/manage the greatest amount of chaos. It’s paradoxical, but a rigid scaffold allows me to have more freedom in my art.
AAS: I want to ask you first about The Garden of Forking Paths. I love your incorporation and interpretation of what the viewer may feel are familiar images but can’t quite be sure.
The Garden of Forking Paths, 36” x 48”, acrylic, wax pastel and oil sticks on canvas
BR: Thank you. A lot of people say they recognize the figures in this painting, but no one can quite place them. The starting point for this piece was Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, which is probably one of the world’s most copied paintings. Picasso made hundreds of variations on this painting, for example. However, Manet stole this theme from a Titian painting and borrowed the figures from a Raphael etching. In my painting, I stole the figures from Raphael, borrowed the compositional grid-work from Titian, and took the color palette and overall mood from Manet. A plethora of plagiarism, of exploded archaeology, pervades art history. I’m just continuing the tradition.
The title, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” references the short story by Jorge Luis Borges, in which a labyrinthine garden contains infinitely forking futures. I saw a parallel in how the endless variations of Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass echo through time, creating its own maze of possible realities. In my painting, I repeated Raphael’s figures in the background to give the uncanny feeling that this has all happened before and will happen again.
AAS: Let Everything Happen To You is another example where the viewer may think they see figures by Michelangelo, Botticelli and others. But as they vibrate off the paper, they become new. I love the way you use familiarity to experience something new.
Let Everything Happen to You, 48” x 57”, acrylic, alcohol ink, India ink and wax pastel on YUPO synthetic paper
BR: I love the way you said that. The figures here come from Poussin, but I wanted to invoke the whole history of Bacchanalias in art. I was thinking a lot about joy when making this painting. I had recently been to a meditation retreat, and towards the end of the retreat I felt an upwelling of joy, accompanied by a similarly overwhelming feeling of terror. I wanted to express that joy, but also the horror that accompanies any feeling that goes too far. All those old bacchanalias have a lot of joy, but also an undercurrent of violence to them. It seemed the perfect theme to express these feelings.
AAS: In Between Lids There Are Counties of Eyes you paint almost an anatomical study of eyes and arms and hands like from an artist’s notebook, and a figure contemplating her own hand. Tell me about that painting?
Between Lids There Are Counties of Eyes, 12” x 16”, watercolor on Khadi handmade paper
BR: This piece is part of a series inspired by the Biblical story of Susanna and the Elders. In this story, Susanna is minding her own business, bathing at the well, when two creepy old men spy her from the bushes. In my rendition of this motif, I reduced the men to a multiplicity of hands and eyes, embodiments of male violence. Seduced by the image in front of them, the elders become what they are seeking—pure visual and tactile desire. In viewing the painting, we are implicated in the crime as well, becoming another pair of eyes ogling with voyeuristic pleasure.
AAS: You can’t successfully ‘steal’, as you put it, from the Old Masters without feeling confident about your drawing skills. Is that something you work on?
BR: Drawing is the foundation of my practice. Every morning I dedicate at least some time to drawing. I’m also part of a drawing group that meets every week in Russellville. We’re called The Barenaked Ladies. We’ve never had a nude model—the name comes from the band because we meet weekly (“It’s been one week…”) It’s really grounding to have a community to meet with and talk shop. It also helps that they’re all fantastic artists—Mark Blaney, Ashley Kinsey, Amy Smith, Anna Stiritz, Soyoon Ahn—a group of legends. We’re all very supportive of each other and I feel like the emotional and spiritual solace is perhaps even more valuable than the artistic advice, which is also great.
AAS: The Insubstantial Pageant Faded is a fascinating painting. Is it in some ways a self-portrait?
This Insubstantial Pageant Faded, 23” x 17.5”, watercolor, acrylic, alcohol ink, India ink, wax pastel on YUPO synthetic paper
BR: That’s a great question. I think it could be. You know, when I made this painting, I was just starting off experimenting with new mediums. I wanted India ink to drip the way that watercolor and alcohol ink does when reactivated, and the only way I could think to do that was to use ammonia. When I finished the painting, it looked the way you see it now in the photograph, but over the months and years since then the whole paint surface has started flaking and crumbling. I should have taken more photos so I could do a time-lapse showing its deterioration. It looks pretty cool, but I can’t sell it in this condition. I definitely learned not to use ammonia to make the paint drip.
it my own picture of Dorian Grey? I sure hope not. But I guess I better keep it safe somewhere just in case.
“I love to explore the physical qualities of paint and ink, like an alchemist experimenting with the elements so I can push their chemical makeup to the outer limits of possibility.”
AAS: I think one of your most powerful paintings and one of my favorites is When You Like You Can Leave With Blood All Over Your Hands. Tell me about it?
When You Like You Can Leave With Blood All Over Your Hands, 18” x 24”, acrylic walnut ink and pen on YUPO synthetic paper
BR: Thanks, it’s one of my favorites too. This painting is of the abduction of the Sabine women, a particularly violent event in Roman history where the men of Rome abducted women from other tribes. The title of my painting comes from a poem by the Arkansas poet, Frank Stanford. To me, the poem is saying, no one gets out of this world without violence. Everyone’s history is soaked in blood—your ancestors were murders, thieves, rapists. Even just existing in society means that you are participating in a brutal and violent regime. You can leave, but the blood is already on your hands.
This is what was going through my head when I made the painting, but I love hearing other people’s interpretations. Many people see a dog in the painting. I did not paint a dog, but there it is. I cannot argue with the dog.
On the materials side, this painting was made with alcohol ink, walnut ink, sumii ink, acrylic, and wax pastel on clay board. The clay board allowed me to carve back into the inks and paints to bring out the figures. When I was almost finished, it all looked a little too rational, so I took a chance and poured isopropyl alcohol all down it. I could have lost the whole painting—a week’s worth of work potentially gone in seconds—but instead I got the hallucinatory effect you see.
AAS: It seems you have experimented with all types of media and painting surfaces. Does this add to your enjoyment of creating or do you think it is just a means to an end?
BR: It’s both. It accomplishes my aesthetic/philosophical goals, and I love the process. I began painting in watercolor to record moments and places as I was traveling. Since then, my paintings have expanded to include a wide array of mediums and techniques, but the core tenets of watercolor remain foundational to my painting. In watercolor I layer transparent color to produce optical effects, often on handmade paper, leaving the edges bare to display the tactile quality of the work. For larger scale mixed media paintings, I paint on aluminum panel or YUPO (a synthetic polymer that feels like plastic). These smooth, non-absorbent surfaces allow the layers of ink and paints to pool and swirl, creating ghostly trails and foggy wisps. Like an archaeologist digging into the past, I drown layers of gesso in water so I can scrape back into the paint, revealing previously buried layers. I use mediums that do not “get along,” such as wax pastel and watercolor. These disparate mediums repel one another on the surface, creating a captivating dance. I love to explore the physical qualities of paint and ink, like an alchemist experimenting with the elements so I can push their chemical makeup to the outer limits of possibility.
