Why Richard Rowan’s new artworks pack a big emotional punch

Featured art [left- right]: 'Afterglow' and 'Better Days'. Limited edition giclées on glass, £850, also available as a set of three.

Making the impossible happen on glass!

Richard’s extraordinary work has a photographic realism, yet is created by painting in oils on glass; as if that isn’t difficult enough, he paints from underneath the glass which is raised on a stand.

For most of his artistic processes, Richard creates his own tools and materials, because he’s at the forefront of his technique. These include a secret ingredient added to blend oil paints, a singular paintbrush hair, a needle, and a sculpted end of a wooden paintbrush handle made to his own specifications. He can spend eight hours at a time on a painting, and often listens to movie soundtracks and then creates a scene evoked by his response; he often doesn’t remember the titles of his paintings but can instantly recall the piece of music they were inspired by.

Featured art: 'Lumiere' (back and front) an original oil painting on glass, £4950.

Reflection and Family

Richard suffered a severe case of COVID-19 which involved a very long recovery period. His latest collection of artworks focuses on reflections as explored through scenes featuring water but symbolically, they explore the theme on reflecting on life and family.

In the collection, Richard hopes to evoke a sense of escapism as well as the paradoxical sense of isolated togetherness. A family unit in secluded landscapes creates a positive feeling of unity and freedom and the tree in the painting ‘Better Days’ represents both himself in contemplative isolation but also his family tree. As with his previous paintings, the birds in Richard’s artworks represent people who are important to him and his choice to incorporate birds into a night scene was at his daughter’s request, as she wanted to be ‘included’ in the painting.

In contrast to his previous work which explored scenes all over the world, including Finland, Iceland and Thailand, this collection features scenes in the UK, particularly Scotland. There’s some artistic licence in his new collection, because Scotland doesn’t have its own natural light displays, so Richard has drawn upon his years of experience witnessing truly vibrant phenomena such as the aurora borealis to capture a realistic dream of what they would look like in Scotland, and so making a real ‘impossible dream’.

The first instalment of Impossible Dream was released in February 2022 to accompany the book of the same title which commemorated Richard’s 15^th anniversary with Castle Fine Art and the full set of five works from the first instalment can be seen here.