Mary Bowen

Mary Bowen is a multifaceted British artist whose work encompasses painting, textile, sculpture, ceramic, and installation. Her lexicon of repeated motifs and characters move between canvas and three-dimensional elements, allowing conversations to form between them. An interest in craft skill and painterly virtuosity is tied to Bowen’s revival of familiar early modernist motifs; the pipe, cardplayers, and the skull. An underlying mysterious and magical element comes from the artist’s interest in alchemy and surrealism, from which Bowen selects symbolism that often interrogates psychology, philosophy, and rites of passage, like life, death, and love. A visual poet, Bowen strips down, combines, and reconfigures these elements, creating fresh and playful work, like Bloody Mary’s Bar, that is shrouded in multiple layers of meaning. Bowen is a graduate from Edinburgh College of Art, and her work was notably selected for RSA New Contemporaries.