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Biography
Owanto was born in Paris, spent her early years in Gabon, Africa, and has now lived in Europe for much of her life. She has been painting for more than 20 years, and her inspiration remains her profound experiences of, and philosophical questions about, life. Owanto has exhibited on both sides of the Atlantic, and her works can be found in private collections in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
1960’s Influences
Africa – it’s colours and open spaces. A deep and strong respect for the unknown and an understanding that, on any level, life has a magical quality.
1980’s Influences
Owanto’s friendship with the talented Spanish artist, architect, musician and poet, Fernando Higueras was to change her life. For three years, Owanto lived within the community of artists and intellectuals who surrounded him, such as Antonio López, Ricardo Vásquez, Cesar Manrique and Lucio Muños. The influence of this community ignited Owanto’s artistic spirit. She embarked on her own journey as an artist and painter and her early works display poetic qualities, fauvist overtones and identifiable influences from her African and Asian cultures.
1989 Pure Expression
Owanto’s oeuvre evolved to a new phase as she began a search for the mystic, and a more intimate connection with her spiritual world. She encountered ‘out of body experiences’ and this had a profound effect on her painting, resulting in a move towards pure expression through abstraction and colour. She identified the cosmic light as her true inspiration. Thus, figurative landscapes metamorphosed into landscapes of the soul.
1990 - 1992 Form, Balance and Power
Moved to London and held several successful solo exhibitions. Owanto’s paintings feature a development toward powerful, gestural abstraction with vibrant colours (The Force Ten Series). Owanto experienced a great period of joy and strong emotions, as she embarked on motherhood for the first time. She began to sculpt during her pregnancy, and her friendship with Elizabeth Wright, R.C.A. and occasional assistant to Sir Anthony Caro, gave her a deeper understanding of form and balance.
1993 - 2000 Intense period of formation
Although Owanto held very few exhibitions during this period it was probably the most creative and energetic time in her artistic development. She basically hid in a cellar in Villefranche-sur-Mer for three years, painting instinctively and profusely and reached a depth of creatively not previously experienced - one from which she still draws upon now. It was a period of lonely but positive transition.
In 1996, Owanto met Louise Sherman, Professor of Art History at California State University. Louise helped her to grow as an artist, and consequently, as a person.
2001 A Louder Voice
Having reached a depth of maturity by creating alone, Owanto was ready to ‘come out of the closet’ and wanting a louder voice. Launched the biographical art book, entitled ‘Owanto’, written by Professor Louise Sherman.
2003 Why does a painting need a wall?
Owanto started a new body of work - painted canvases wrapped around frames to create freestanding vertical forms. The first TOTEM was born. Hybrid and resonant with the powerful dualities of light and dark, energy and stasis, the earthly and the spiritual, the Totems embody both a physical passion for life and a concern for the inner metaphysical one.
2004 Launched her second book, entitled ‘Visual Poetry’, written in collaboration with Professor Louise Sherman.
2005 The Third Dimension
The work continued to evolve entering another dimension (reminding us of Calder) as Owanto gave the Totems mobility by hanging them free, giving them an ethereal presence. Even the paintings which were On the Wall took on a third dimension appearing Off the Wall. Dissolving boundaries between media, forms, space and cultural signifiers is a path to seducing the viewer, from any viewpoint, and engaging him/her with a creative spirit, at once both internal and questioning, as well as outwardly celebratory of life. It is a concern for the balance between these inner and outer realms of human life which motivates the artist. In naming her Totems the ‘Great Connectors’, Owanto is alluding to her personal philosophy that “We come from the Unknown, and we go back to the Unknown, but in between we try to accomplish a meaningful journey.”
Catherine Wilson (London Art Critic) “To describe the art of Owanto, for example, as Abstract Expressionist, even Neo-Expressionist or to align it obliquely with the western idea of the ‘avant-garde’ is to deny the breadth and complexity of her work. For beyond the surface is a dynamic, rich interplay between forms and signifiers from both western and non-western cultures. As an international artist working within a cross-cultural milieu, Owanto has a stronger affinity to the notion of a ‘trans-cultural avant-garde’ and artists who express their personal and universal concerns today from a position that embraces different cultural perspectives.
2005 3-D acquires mobilty
The work continues to evolve entering another dimension - reminding us of Calder. In ‘Floating Totems’, Owanto gives the Totems mobility by hanging them free, giving them an effervescent presence. Dissolving boundaries between media, forms, space and cultural signifiers is a path to seducing the viewer, from any viewpoint, and engaging him/her with a creative spirit, at once both internal and questioning, as well as outwardly celebratory of Life. - Catherine Wilson, art critic
2006 Installations
Action of Man The intervention of man is being questioned as the Totems In Wood are installed On Wood and displayed in a buzzing New York corporate building. While the African forests are being devastated, the artist is aware of her participation in the chain of events as she transforms the okoume wood into an art piece. Guilty? Not guilty? The Totemic okoume wood figures now stand among chopped stumps – wood from another territory. A testimony to our multi-cultural society? The logs were a simple gathering of a gardener, the thought of placing the Totems on the pile was what Owanto called an insight, the dare was to photograph the Totems as top models and later to export them to be contemplated by a vast
audience.
MEMORIAL Owanto is currently working on a memorial project to honour the thousands of palms in the South of Spain that have fallen prey to pest. Instead of the simple replacement of a lamppost, the artist is working in cooperation with the city of Marbella to transform the trunks of magnificent height into monuments of art and return them to the city, return them to the earth. 2006 The Serendipitous Artist Owanto unintentionally discovers the original support beneath the clay when the original clay mould intended for the lifesize Seated Mother and Child cracks irrevocably, revealing the support underneath. The Seated Mother and Child gives birth to The Giver of Light, and this discovery of the primordial became the base matter for a new series of work: ‘Metal Structures’ and a yet deeper layer in the expression of Love and Life. Pink Perspective is then created with the intention of being a work in its own right. In this series, we can see the connection with the inner depth – moving the viewer away from the pleasing effect of beautiful art towards issues of a more philosophical nature. Injecting the metal with colour brings Owanto’s work to a point where her sculptures and paintings share a magical approach.
2006 Adding layers Creation of a white plaster mould of Owanto s sculpture, to allow another approach to the viewer, an ‘Off the Sculpture’ perspective.
2006-2007 Re-injecting Sense More than a decade after the birth of ‘The Growing Family’, the artist uses a simple strategy to re-inject sense into the universal theme of Love and Life that appears today completely banalized. The first tentative step places the small bronzes on a pedestal, and ultimately, in a glass cage. This new display conveys Owanto’s desire to express Love* and its fragility/underlying strength. The glass rooms have a small quirk – one side has been left open. The empty space invites the viewer to touch the sculptures and to share the same space, becoming a part of the artwork. The old-fashioned traditional bronze sculptures are being given a renewed energy – the viewer may value what he has got or what he may lose!
2007 Growing Family Revisited
INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION
Enlarging the work creates a new scale of feeling for the viewer. Intimate becomes monumental. To be then surrounded by a glass container that allows the viewer to occupy the same space as the art, what feelings does it provoke? To be in such close proximity to a bigger than lifesize artwork, and someone’s interpretation of love, what sensations does it produce in the observer? Another version, more cutting edge, explores new technologies and the art of the digital age. Here, the artist offers the vision of an unborn child displayed through a television monitor contained in the belly. Where are we going?
2007 Breakthrough
The Seated Mother and Child sculpture is purchased by the prestigious Fundación Fran Daurel in Pueblo Español, Barcelona. The lifesize bronze
will now be exhibited in a public space, fulfilling the artist’s dream of diseminating her message of Life* to a vast audience of more than 300,000 people per year. 2007 Owanto goes monumental The connectedness of things, the chain of events, is being proved through this immense development. From the accidental moment when the artist discovers the primordial - the structure underneath - and sees it as her new artwork, the feeling of magic is brought to the surface, giving Life* another dimension. The Pink Perspective Metal Structure is being enlarged to monumental size, approximately 9 metres high, in Morocco. It is the proposed piece for the new International Airport in Malaga.
2007 The artist begins exploring photography and video art.
Where the Sheep Run
Messages in the Bottle
Late 2007
New horizons In the Tribeca Grand in New York, an ‘Off the Wall’ exhibition, 5-metre-high Totems will be suspended from a glass cupola, floating, creating the effect of a cosmic galaxy.
Owanto is currently producing her third book.
As a multicultural artist my proposition is to offer the vision of an identity without borders. It is about transcending our feeling of seperateness, about going beyond our differences and finding a common soul - the identity of the human race.
The artist presents Love and Life as entwingled**– one cannot exist without the other.
** Twins that are mingled together.
For more Information please contact owanto@monaco.mc
