The paintings of Bill Lowe’s debut solo exhibition — which opened during a public reception at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery on July 26 — may be fixed to the walls of the Joe Peters Lounge, but each image has momentum. The crisp lines of The Juggler, whose human form is transmuted into a blazing abstract of interlocking geometries, exert the power of gravity on orbiting and overlapping globes. Nearby, the Ice Skater defies even the frictionless physics of a frozen rink: its symmetrical blades are fully extended, and the performer’s path wends through a sweltering palette of saffron and sapphire.
A fascination with motion seems fitting for someone who worked in the automotive industry, until retirement allowed Lowe the time to develop an art practice from his Sechelt studio. It began with woodworking for the purposes of relaxation. Then a trip to Paris whetted his appetite for abstract painting, once he discovered the effects of acrylic and resin. Although the works that compose his Formations of Thought show in Gibsons are two-dimensional, he routinely applies his richly-coloured conformations to custom-made furniture, while exploring a variety of other styles (including cubism) on canvas.
“I had to keep it focused in terms of what we’re going to do [in Joe’s Lounge] because of the size of the space,” he said. “I couldn’t bring 30 different styles of painting in here because the room wouldn’t handle something like that.”
Lowe has developed a style he dubs “panel painting.” The process involves capturing a photograph of one of his paintings, distorting it, and then painting his view of the modified photograph. He also uses acrylic liquid paint to draw in the paint itself, although it doesn’t flow like the pouring paint he used for the concentration of circles, arcs, and lines in his current showcase.
It’s not all sharp contours: in Altered State, his pour of primary colours undulate like mist in a magic mirror. The angular indentation of Box Canyon appears in contrast to the amorphous chromatic landscape that surrounds and coats it. His Architecture of Ideas provides another geometric counterpoint: sharp-edged cuboids extrude toward the viewer, emerging from a rainbow-hued background that hints at the liminality of a dazzling seashore.
His depiction of the creative process itself (as in Neurons — Alive and Firing) is reminiscent of the drip technique of expressionist Jackson Pollock, but with a facility for sublimating specific cultures and geographies. “I was listening to French café music as I was painting [a work ultimately titled Paris Map],” he recollected, “and when I looked at it a couple of days later, I realized that when you stand far enough back from it, it looks like an aerial view of the city of Paris. And I said to myself: I can accept that.”
Lowe has previously exhibited as part of the annual Art Crawl studio tour in the last two years, and plans to open his Thimbleberry Place studio again this October. His Tabletop composition was featured at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery earlier this summer.
“I always feel that the artist has to have fun,” Lowe added. “I like bright colours. I like movement and energy, so it shows up in my art. The colours seem to have a mind of their own, but I like it, and I’m along for the ride.”
Formations of Thought by Bill Lowe remains on display at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery until Aug. 17.
