THE ENIGMATIC PAINTINGS OF Steven McCowan

As the repositories of pictorial ideas carried to a sardonic extreme, the peculiar personalities who occupy the enigmatic paintings of Steven McCowan confront the viewer with masked faces and bizarre actions.  Their colors, although straight from the tube, have a strong propensity to take on artificial tinges that tend to establish a protective barrier between the artist who created them and the world around him.  The orchestration of their strange chromatic harmonies also inhibits any overt references to the natural world, thus transcending a merely pictorial interpretation.  Undoubtedly, painting for Steven McCowan is an independent means of expression and exploration; its essence revealed through odd figurations and their unusual activities, and a unique visual language of personal symbols.

The restless, searching style of painting practiced by Steven McCowan is dependent on a steady rhythmic brushwork that is applied to match the substance of his imagery.  The subjects may appear humorous on the surface, but closer examination reveals an edge to their humor, a wit that is far more sardonic than comic.   The characters exist in a constant state of interaction, while apparently isolated, lending an air of tension to their arrangements.   To create this tension, the mechanics of his compositions are deliberately emphasized, with foreground and background bound together to give his characters a confrontational, and disturbing, power.  Bold areas of color are brought together to describe and locate his figures and give his themes a particular resonance.  The effect of color, placed directly without preliminary drawing so areas of brushwork define edges, emphasizes the grotesque almost to the point of caricature.  So, despite their sense of wit and humor, his works are tinged with the satire that revolves around his unique cast of characters.

Bound by color and indulging their passions and peculiarities, the personalities that inhabit the works of Steven McCowan soon reveal that they cavort in an environment of the imagination, but informed by life’s experiences.  Perhaps inspired by the cultural legacy and rich mythology of his Scottish heritage, he has drawn from its complexities the ability to create his own highly effective modern and personal symbols.  A unique visual language accompanies the exploits of his characters and reappears often and recognizably to the inquisitive viewer.  Masks, religious symbols, animals, the physically deformed, and emotionally isolated contribute to the works’ intricacies and assist in the decipherment of their meaning. 

Since the second decade of the twentieth century saw the highly charged figurations and jarring contrasts that were representative of the German Expressionists, few artists have attempted to so intensify humanity’s realization of itself.  Steven McCowan works with the same passionate commitment to figuration as a mode of powerful expression.  Whether his purpose is one of wry commentary or insightful psychological exploration, his paintings are penetrating and provocative.  Through the forced distortion of natural forms and a direct and primitive vigor of execution, Steven McCowan transforms his subjects into new levels of meaning.  Intimate friends and family join saints and heroes, the abject and the condemned, the ironic and absurd.  Few can escape his cynical eye and acerbic brush.  Crammed together or isolated in space, his figures are pushed to the point of psychological distress or comic relief.  Masked by the false bravado of a painted face, they endure the vagaries of life, hidden from the reality of its very meaning.  In fact, the mask becomes the reality and involves the viewers in a strange communion of fantasy further exacerbated by the dissonance of color and composition.

Although Mr. McCowan says that he often feels very much like the lead in a Kafka story and has developed an imaginary life and people to survive, it is evident that he has painted their existence into a new visual reality.  He himself does not appear to be fraught with the anxieties of modern life that his characters endure.  That may only be a front that one sees, while actual reality is revealed through the people in his paintings.  As they engage in activities symptomatic of the world’s many delusions, one can not help but wonder, who are they and why are they behaving in this manner?  Are these masked, anonymous and faceless personalities evidence of the indifference, stupidity and venality of the modern world?  Is he forcing his own cynical invective on the protagonists of his paintings or is he merely amusing himself at their expense?  Such questions accompany Steven McCowan’s perplexing images and make them even more fascinating.  The viewer is invited to enter his world and, if one dares, participate in its lunacy.

Carol Damian Ph.D.
Florida International University
February 1998