Unprecedented Presence

The extraordinary, expansive

and undiscovered work of artist Danny Owens

[ pause for effect ]

© 2008 noumena 2

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To Recognize The Unseen…

The work presented here has developed in private over vast amounts of time, effort and isolation. It is born without instruction, or derivation, or commercial manipulation. What you see is pure artistic effort, realized in beauty.

© 2008 noumena 3

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The Beginning Was An End

The artist chose to be an artist. A career was abandoned. A path begun. Paintings were made, a show put on, friends attended, but no paintings were purchased. The artist saw his work and thought then that painting was about the act more than the end. So he focused on the essence of the process, ignored statements and escapes and emotional escapades, and began again free from preconception.

© 2008 noumena 4

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Painting The Basic A new approach began in April, 1987. The first stroke was crude and fundamental. It lead to another, and then to more. Each effort informed the next, each painting became the teacher for how to paint, each image the template for other images. A continuous process was born.

© 2008 noumena 5

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The Basics Of Painting

Materials: Brush, Paint, Surface and Hand Rules: Line, Color, Balance and Form Subject: Object and Ground Viewer: Maker and Spirit

The artist’s approach brought him to confront and master the most fundamental aspects of painted art.

© 2008 noumena 6

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The Development Of Skill The artist learned to craft art. The hand learned finesse and control. The body learned peace and acceptance. The eye learned vision and discretion. The mind learned discovery and experimentation.

© 2008 noumena 7

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The Evolution Of Pattern Repetition of form occurred within every painting, across all painted work. Patterns were born, grew, changed and evolved into more patterns. Species and families and kingdoms of shapes came to be. A self-contained, wildly populated visual world emerged.

© 2008 noumena 8

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A Propagation Of Species

An empire of original work was manifest…

As individual paintings, groups of paintings, and the entire body of work.

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The Abandon Of Image Missing in this long process was what is most popular in today’s art - contrivance of image. Abstract by happenstance Intentionally rendered Unguided by precedent

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•Abandon Allowed Experimentation

With freedom to explore and an imperative for parsimony, the works migrated within the boundlessness of its own style and across the boundaries of available surfaces.

© 2008 noumena 11

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•Exploration Lead To Reversal

Paintings progressed onto acrylic plexi-glass, allowing fast motions and smooth strokes. The transparency of surface lead to painting on the back of the canvas, revealing a new view of learned skills.

© 2008 noumena 12

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Following Visions Lead

Each new work in this reverse-painted approach strengthened Danny Owens’ understanding of seeing, perceiving and the seeking-of-meaning-out-of the-meaningless

© 2008 noumena 13

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Dimension In A Flat Plane He learned to work depth into what was seen, though it was physically absent in the mass of the piece.

© 2008 noumena 14

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Carving With Color… The process is a spell, a dance, a careful romance with the continuous basics of painting

© 2008 noumena 15

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Sculpting With Light Ultimately, the artist Danny Owens learned to work the energy of illumination

© 2008 noumena 16

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Objects Of Mystery

The result is a body of work possessing unusual qualities of visual, mental and spiritual candor.

© 2008 noumena 17

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•Multiple Paintings, One Space

Changes in the direction and intensity of light are revelations of hidden scenes

Visual transformation means each viewing is like the first viewing

© 2008 noumena 18

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Worlds Within Worlds

Changing the scale and orientation of the work reveal paintings nested within paintings nested within paintings

© 2008 noumena 19

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Incremental Profundity Reverse painting has lead to a greater truth of art:

Each stroke reveals a moment of creative quality Free expression is captured in its making Skill, experience and intent guide the hand The finished work is visible only when finished

So then has contrivance of image been further removed, and implication within image intensified.

© 2008 noumena 20

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The End Is A Beginning

The artist has arrived at a starting point. He has learned to begin at the end, and end with a beginning. Just as the highlights of the work start each piece, and its far background is its finish, so too has his life followed a process summed up as “opposite by intent.”

© 2008 noumena 21

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Humble Artist

Gregarious and mysterious

Loving and garrulous Focused and

adventurous Free and

iconoclastic Simple and

inscrutable

© 2008 noumena 22

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Extraordinary PropertiesThis body of work represents a most unusual opportunity:

Autonomous - created in isolation Self-Generated - references only itself for visual basis Spontaneous - each stroke is visible to the viewer, most are

painted out of the sight of the artist himself Original - not based on, or attempting to convey, any known

– or even knowable – image Provocative - convey a multitude of perceptual patterns and

cues Luminous - transformed by light and into exotic data from

unknowable realms Irreproducible - each painting is the first and only one of

its kind that can ever be

© 2008 noumena 23

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What You Just Saw

The images in this presentation include complete works as well as close-cropped sections of paintings

There are multitudes of such images within each finished piece

The artist works almost entirely with just one brush (everything is done with brush stokes, not by using “texturing” tools)

There was no editing or photographic tricks to produce these images

These works are best viewed in person, in hand, under direct focused halogen light, with imagination fully active

© 2008 noumena 24

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The PresenterNoumena®

Merchants of Beauty and Intellect

Representing assets of mind and matter from beyond the known. Experimental ArtExperimental InstrumentsExperimental Ideas

Office: 972-506-3730Cell: 817-343-3965Cell: 817-994-5459Email: noumena@dannyowens.net

See the artist’s work, and noumena’s words, at: www.dannyowens.netRead the artist’s words and see more work at: myspace.com/dannyowensartist