Untitled

Laura Owens infuses her work with a multitude of influences, styles, and references. As a result, many bits and pieces of art history comprise the whole of her complex and layered paintings. “Instead of looking at... the totality of [an] artwork, and taking that in and using it, I’ll take little pieces,” the artist says. “I think of that as a more personal and interpretive quality that’s coming from within.”

Untitled bears traces of Owens’s interest in Chinese and Japanese landscape painting and printmaking. Clouds, waves, and mountains in pastel colors initially appear hastily rendered. Yet small, thick dashes of paint are precisely placed to create falling petals across the canvas, giving the composition a sense of delicate, but deliberate, structure. However informed by the past, Owens’s deft washes of paint and carefully finessed marks achieve a sense of harmony that feels distinctly contemporary.

This work was exhibited in the 1999 Carnegie International.