ART REVIEWS
ARTIST FOOLS THE EYE
WITH PENCIL & PEN
By Brandon Goldner
{Article from THE COMMUTER Arts & Entertainment Section Corvallis Oregon 4-23-2008}
Amazing. Unbelievable. Impossible.
How can you describe the work of Washington artist Chuck Bowden?
What is there to say, really, to a man whose work has been mistaken by professionals for photography? His work, which runs through the early part of May at Corvallis’ Pegasus Gallery, is almost beyond description.
Early in his career, Bowden aspired not just to replicate something substantial, but to create substance itself. In his own words, “My goal and intent was never to imitate the photo….my intent was and is to surpass the photo, for the photo is just an imitation itself of the reality upon which it is based.”
He succeeds.
Bowden not only produces work that is both realistic and dreamlike, but it conveys a complex and original observation of our world and it’s beauty and troubles.
His earlier work, taken directly from existing pictures, need to be examined closely before one is convinced that a ballpoint pen was responsible for these masterpieces.
How?
Every one of his works, the originals of which are not for sale, takes between 30 and 1000 hours to complete. That’s 1 to 40 days of dedicated persistence, weeks of putting pen to paper over and over. And over. And over again.
Despite the ethereal quality of his art and the ferocity of their messages, Bowden himself remains humble, even unimpressed.
“I use the simplest of tools….pencil, ball point pen and paper, so there would be no questions or mystery involved in understanding the artwork….sometimes people are rather perplexed about the process of art, but in my case, everyone has put pencil to paper and there should be no mystery.”
Some of Bowden’s work is of late 19th or early 20th-century photographs, some are of more contemporary scenes, and much of his recent work serves as incredibly complex and disturbing critical commentary.
Other pieces defy all aspects of what is possible to create with his chosen medium. And exquisite Maxfield Parrish homage, a scene of rolling hills, clouds, and trees, is barely larger than the face of a penny. An incredibly detailed scene of a couple holding hands, drawn on… wait for it… and ostrich egg.
When asked what he hopes viewers will gain having experienced his work, Bowden says “It would be an insight into an awareness of reality previously unconsidered, that maybe there is something more to this world than we have been told.”
There truly is no way to give justice to Bowden’s masterful manipulation of such ordinary tools, nor the scenes which seem frozen, etched upon the face of time itself. The closest one may come is to experience the art in person, facing the horrible, well-crafted truth as well as bathing in the sunlight of century-old scenes brought to life.
All with a ballpoint pen and pencil.
Impossible.