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Johan Lowie grew up in Ypres, Belgium and speaks English, French, Dutch--a polyglot of romantic influences. Lowie received a BFA in Plastic Arts (1979) from Kortryk Institute of Technology and an MFA in Painting (1983) from KASK, the Royal Academy of Arts in Ghent. Eight years working as a commercial artist, developing graphic designs for widely varied clients, both sharpened his technical skills while also distilling his passion and desire to pursue more personal expressions instead.
After visiting family who reside in the Northeastern U.S. and Canada, Johan Lowie moved to The Finger Lakes region of New York State in the Spring of 1994. A few years later he moved to Fredrick County, Maryland where he currently works as a full time artist since 2005 and from his studio in The Griffin Art Center since 2007.
Lowie’s decades of creative work evoke deep, unsettled feelings that come from the frisson of life experiences churning directly against interior wheels of emotion. His images present experience and observation transformed by contemplation. Where a superficial review of his work might determine it to be purely surreal, longer exposure suggests deeply emotional, honest explorations about how we remember our own feelings as we accumulate experience through life.
Lowie’s work challenges viewers, but that challenge gives as much as it takes. Where viewers may first encounter assertive designs and compelling compositions, they soon find themselves forced to reckon with their own relationship to the images.
He asks viewers not simply to consume his images, but to digest them, integrate them, and ask themselves why they feel the way they do. In an era saturated with invented, inventive images, that provocative moment of introspection may be the most elusive filter.
Lowie’s paintings are sought after by collectors across the US and Europe.

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All artwork is framed by Johan.