"The Gregories"

Devon Nowlin

oil on canvas, 2010, 45x75"

Leaving Nothing Behind (2010, oil on canvas, 72x44") was chosen by jurors Christina Rees and Richard Patterson for 500x's Expo 2010. 

I don't know the young man in this painting. I like to think that he had a crush on a neighbor-girl who recently went off to college. He broke his arm rescuing her cat who was left behind at her parent's house, and who, distraught over her owner's absence, climbed too high up a tree and wouldn't come down. The photograph used as reference for the painting was taken as a record of his heroism. Alternate title: Firefighter 1.

My fellow grads and I are at Gallery 414 December 5 - January 10 with an opening reception Saturday, December 12 from 6-9 pm. Come one, come all. Artists include Shafaq Ahmad, Nate Glaspie, Tim Harding, Lorrie McClanahan, Adeniyi Olagunju, Harmony Padgett and Christoph Trendel. 

New paintings and drawings are on their way, coming along nicely. I'm getting quite comfortable in my new studio at TCU. It has already proven to be a great place for me to come and get busy painting. I am adding the first of my completed works to the website's galleries but they might appear on my Flickr account faster.

Afternoon on Beringer Hill is representative of the work I'm doing from my collection of found photographs, mostly from the 1940s & 50s. 

Meditative Elements Produce Beneficial Effects was produced at the invitation of Anne Allen, curator for the Trinity Perspectives; Views of an Urban River exhibition at the Fort Worth Community Art Center. The exhibit was organized as a benefit for Streams and Valleys, Inc. and opens for Fall Gallery Night on September 12. See the link for other artists included in the exhibition.

I researched images of the river from the early 20th century and chose one of a Clear Fork flood in 1935 as my source for the river to bring together images of past & present/environment vs man. The figure in the painting, Woody Evans, exerts a calm and guiding force over the turbulent nature of the flood waters. 

The model is my sister, Erin Crouch. This is likely the last painting in The Home Journal series. I am returning to school in the fall and plan to do studies, experiments, and a lot of home improvement this summer. Wow, I am really looking forward to this summer.

I loved this setting because of the garish colors, and because the view into the bathroom gives the impression that there's someone around that corner. A person in this bedroom is waiting for someone else, so this is the mood I wanted to set with Erin as the subject. The "three graces" lamp behind her is an added bonus. My mother and aunts regularly recreate this pose in goofy ways so it appears in family and vacation photos over the years. More so than the fact that Erin, Melissa and I make three sisters, this image always reminds me of my mother and aunts.  

PaintPresent - Loudoun House Gallery, Lexington, Ky. "Paintpresent explores contemporary ideas and images in painting with a focus on dense abstractions, fantastic figurations and architectural anomie." - from website.

I was very pleased to have "Designed for Contemporary Living" accepted in this show; the parameters of what they were seeking sounded like my work fit in well. Looking at the online gallery posting, I think the works included in the sphere of "dense abstraction" could be a great smaller show by themselves, and I would liked to have seen more "fantastic figurations" (of course). To me, this painting seems to stick out like a sore thumb, but I have to remind myself that I am looking at the selections online, everything seen at the same scale, the artists listed alphabetically. I bet it is beautifully curated, though.

After working with Elizabeth Hurtado on her recent exhibit, I realized that I'd better start drawing again. I'm loosing the skill and I need to get it back. So far my efforts haven't been as consistent as I would like, but as with most things, I know it takes some time for me to introduce new habits.

This is a set of three self-portraits drawn on vellum. Overlapping them creates, perhaps, a different type of serial image that reflects the passage of time spent drawing the work. I hope to produce drawings from life of a few people, where the experience of that time together is captured. The recent Olifur Eliasson exhibition "Take Your Time" at the Dallas Museum of Art was spectacular. It impressed me a great deal. How can I, as a fairly traditional 2-D artist, work with time without the use of time-based media?