JOHN E. DOWELL, JR. (1941 - )
TO BE OUT but in.
Oil on linen canvas, 1985. 1219x610 mm; 48x24 inches. Signed, titled and dated in white oil, verso.
Provenance: McDonald's Corporate Art Collection, Oakbrook, IL (deaccessioned); private collection.
John Dowell's The White Paintings, 1976 - 1990 is a series that was inspired by dance and the implications of movement. The works appear at first to be pure negative space, but after a prolonged interaction the viewer recognizes the joyous movement of color occurring in each canvas. The surface of TO BE OUT but in is elegantly built up with impasto. The undulating movement on the canvas is reminiscent to the choreography of jazz and ballet. Another work from the series, To Weave through Time, 1979, is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
John E. Dowell, Jr. is a printmaker, etcher, lithographer, painter, and professor emeritus of printmaking at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. Influenced by the improvisation of Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, and Jackson Pollock and modern jazz musicians Miles Davis, Archie Shepp, and Cecil Taylor, Dowell invokes an abstract representation of jazz sheet music.
Philadelphia native and master printmaker John E. Dowell, Jr. studied at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University under the tutelage of ceramist Rudolf Staffel. Dowell has received many awards for his work, including the James VanDerZee Award from the Brandywine Workshop and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Dowell's work is also in the permanent collections of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Worcester Art Museum. He was one of a group of artists chosen for the United States presentation of the 1970 Venice Biennale.
