Graham Fowler

Graham Fowler

Graham Fowler - Biography

Graham Fowler was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1952. He studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1975. He went on study to Concordia University in Montreal, receiving his Master of Fine Arts in 1980, and at McGill University (Montreal), where he earned his Diploma in Education in 1982. He began teaching visual arts at Keyano College in Fort McMurray, Alberta, that same year. In 1989, Fowler began teaching at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

Since 1978, Fowler has been exhibiting his paintings in solo and group shows across Canada and in the United States. In 2002 the Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon) held a major solo exhibition, Graham Fowler: The Water Paintings, and in 2008 Fowler and his wife, painter Catherine Perehudoff Fowler, were featured in a two-person exhibition at The Gallery in London, England.

Fowler's work has shifted from the more abstract to the representational over his career. Fowler draws on natural themes to create highly detailed images of forests, gardens, and other natural landscapes. He explains the inspiration he finds in this subject matter: “As human beings, we are the products of our past, and thus our learned history, and when we experience nature through our constructed biases, we cannot escape these. In my work, in regards to my experience of nature, there is a paradox. In the suburbs of Halifax, where I grew up, there were streams and lakes, and quite literally I could walk into the forest, and I did. And so it is almost like I keep returning to a childhood Arcadia, which is probably part of my attraction to water and light. On the other hand, that is a side of me I've left behind, and I can get very uncomfortable in nature, and can find it overpowering. When I present these natural images in my painting, I'm trying to bring order to that overwhelming chaos.”

Selected Collections:
- Global Affairs Canada, Paris, France
- Mendal Art Gallery, Saskatoon Saskatchewan
- Museum London, London, Ontario
- Dominion Securities, Toronto, Ontario
- Investors Group, Winnipeg, Manitoba
- Pan Pacific Corp., Vancouver, British Columbia
- Center 200, Sydney, Nova Scotia
- Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia (three paintings)
- Alberta Art Foundation, Edmonton, Alberta (two paintings)
- Hurtig Publishing, Edmonton, Alberta
- Keyano College, Fort McMurray, Alberta
- Texaco Canada, Calgary, Alberta
- Kellner Jordan Ltd., Toronto, Ontario
- Maclean Hunter, Toronto, Ontario
- Pitfield, MacKay and Ross, Toronto, Ontario
- Government of Ontario, Social Development, Whitney Block, Toronto, Ontario
- Hudson Bay Corporation Collection, Toronto, Ontario
- Nova Scotia Art Bank, Halifax, Nova Scotia (three paintings)
- University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan (three paintings)
- Shaw Cable, Calgary, Alberta (five paintings)
- University College of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia,
- University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta
- Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, B.C.(three paintings)

Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2018 - Movement and the Transient Illusion of Light, Han Gallery, Westmount, (Montreal), Quebec
2016 - Water and the Impermanence of Surface, Gallery Gevik, Toronto, Ontario
2014 - Graham Fowler, Over Rocks, Under Trees, Up the Stream A Piece, Douglas Udell Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta
2009 - Recent Works, Gevik Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
2007 - Experiences of the Liquid World, Douglas Udell Gallery, Vancouver, BC
2003 - Graham Fowler, Intaglio Prints, Douglas Udell Gallery, Vancouver, BC
2002 - The Water Paintings, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK (Catalogue)
2002 - New Work, Douglas Udell Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta
1997 - New Works, Douglas Udell Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia
1995 - Graham Fowler, Douglas Udell Gallery, Edmonton, AB (Catalogue)
1993 - New Work, Douglas Udell Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia
1992 - Recent Work, Nancy Poole's Studio, Toronto, Ontario
1990 - Recent Work, Woltjen/Udell Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta. Poster produced.
1988 - Recent Paintings, Nancy Poole's Studio, Toronto, Ontario
1987 - New Work, Woltjen/Udell Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia
1986 - New Work, Woltjen/Udell Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta. Poster produced.
1986 - Recent Paintings and Drawings, Nancy Poole's Studio, Toronto, Ontario.
1985 - Recent Works, The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, NS (Catalogue)
1984 - New Paintings, Nancy Poole's Studio, Toronto, Ontario
1984 - The I In Landscape, Provincial Building, Fort McMurray, Alberta
1982 - Paintings, Nancy Poole's Studio, Toronto, Ontario
1981 - New Works on Canvas, Nancy Poole's Studio, Toronto, Ontario
1980 - Master's Examination, Bourget Building, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec.
1978 - Organic Life in Fluid Motion, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Catalogue and poster produced.

Artist Specialization: Post-impressionist landscape - "My paintings are derived from photographs of landscape sites to which I have a strong aesthetic response and depict landscape in both an untouched, natural state as well as constructed park sites. Using detailed geological maps, I go to great lengths to obtain my subject matter, hiking deep into the wilderness following rivers and streams. I am largely interested in landscape as a potentially non-narrative motif. My focus is on painting representations of the fragmented, almost pixelated surface of water for its formal and aesthetic qualities. I am particularly interested in the play of light and colour, the tension created by the compression of near and far space, and the use of an overall picture plane wher no one area is pictorially more important than another. In these paintings I am finding ways of linking representational landscape paintings to formal aesthetic strategies, in particular non-hierarchal conceptions of overall space that are present in non-objective painters such as Mark Toby." -Graham Fowler