Owen Dailey

To read Owen's and his father Dan's review in The Columbus Dispatch, click Here

Objects in our world can be seen with or without a sensitivity to subtlety or nuance. Where most things are viewed on the surface from a distance or in a rapid fashion, art gives us the opportunity to stop— and look closer, to invest time to notice details and the careful placement of marks on a canvas. The paintings I make are viewable from a distance as well as up close and ask the viewer to transition their focus from the image as a whole to the individual layers and their minute features. I rely on the language of color and the feeling a color can provide. Consciously or subconsciously, the colors and their layered effects can illicit a feeling from the person who takes a moment to live in the space created by my painting.

I form my images as an arrangement of layers. Each mark is made by masking the surface of the canvas and soaking the layer with color around the mask which is brushed on. Once the paint has dried, I repeat the masking and coloring on the next layer, rebuilding the image again for every layer. After several applications, I peel the masking off and reveal the brushwork of all the layers combined. This manner of working gives me the opportunity to break down the image into distinct areas and to design their relationships. The layers affect the image with color primarily, but also pattern or gradients of color shifting. 

My sculptural work presents colors in space. The tetrahedron series and the wall mosaic series are not representational work and use the simple beauty of geometric lines and the relationship of forms within each piece to resolve the space that the forms occupy. My choice to work with glass and metals, gives a framework to place bright and luminescent forms in arrangements that compel a viewer to shift their perspective and move about the object to understand it. Glass delivers color like no other material and my goal is to arrange an object where that character of color can be shared and enjoyed in its pure and simple clarity.

-Owen Dailey