Opaque
foregrounds and horizons are featured in Round Midnight,
Signs of Life, Dune, and Stratus Blue. Conversely, translucent
foregrounds accept background features (such as horizons)
in Beckoning Horizon, Veils 1, Destiny, and Spirit’s Landing. Lownie’s
edges have slid through Mark Rothko’s meditative
expressionist horizons via the artist’s abstract
transcendentalism.
For some canvasses (e.g., Spirit’s Landing), a rectangular
surface functions as the subject, casting its shadow onto
a landscape. Here then is an object of intermediate dimension,
i.e., between a two- and three-dimensional object. But,
by 2005, that thematic surface is fully transcended. For
example, in Veils 2 and Speed of Light 2, it’s dimension
takes on a more visual perspective of its own (although
it is still only a surface) shedding the need for supporting
surroundings. In the contemporaneous Fissure, an upper
surface’s hidden edge is echoed by a nick on its
inverted lower surface. So, preservation of Fissure’s
opaque edge is the theme of the painting. In retrospect,
both Veil 2’s and Speed of Light 2’s emphasis
on the surface without its surroundings, and Fissure’s
thematic focus on the opaque boundary alone, can both be
seen as seminal to Lownie’s latter period paintings.
| The surface transcended from
its surroundings in Veils 2 (upper), and the thematic
opaque edge of Fissure (lower): both seminal to
the later period. |
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| Dune’s opaque
horizon (left). Spirit’s Landing’s foreground
surface accepts the horizon; and casts a shadow (right). |
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Later period
The later period is dominated by a mixed media of metal
leaf and acrylic. The works’ thematic edges exhibit
a crystalline topography under high tension. Rather than
allowing forms to intersect consonantly (as in the earlier
period), here the boundaries are clearly emphasized, because
the forms emphatically do not intersect. Rather, they mate,
and do so jaggedly. Dissonance is clear. Except for the
contemplative titles of Afterglow and Silver Solstice,
the opaque metal incisors of these works show the impenetrable
front of crises: the gnashing bite of tidal waves, lightning,
crevasses, and earthquakes. Rather than the earlier period’s
hushed shimmer of zephyric strings (musically, say, as
in Webern’s Symphony,
op.21), the cold crash of cymbal
and metallophone are heard (as in, say, Mayuzumi’s
Vajra-Dhatu
Mandala).
By its nature, metal leaf is not translucent. It doesn’t
passively absorb: it defiantly reflects. Rather than
glimpses to the outer world, the canvases of this latter
period appear to be glimpses inward to a deeper two-dimensional
cross-sectioned microscopic world. Perhaps because of
this, there appears to be an attempt to retain the higher
dimensionality of the earlier period: The Silver Solstice
is outstretched in flight, the Earthly Gasp disintegrates
along a visual perspective, and both Epicenters and Tsunami
flame their metallic edges into a sky-like background
(in a modulation similar to Stratus Blue). |
| Dissonant mating is clear
in Epicenter 2 (upper) and Tsunami (lower).
The edges modulate into sky-like backgrounds |
| Attempts at retaining
dimensionality in Silver Solstice (upper) and
Earthly Gasp (lower) |
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