An Introduction to the Work of Derek Owens
by Rev. Otis Neck-Wenden
The son of theosophists who followed the teachings of 19th century spiritualist Helena Blavatsky, Derek Owens was exposed to polytheistic beliefs at an early age. After losing an eye in an accident at age ten he went on to become one of the greatest fill-in-the-blanks of the nineteenth century.
Before embarking on a career in the arts Owens worked as an itinerant dairymaid and a failed chemist. “Rhythm and space, space and rhythm, how can I learn more about them?” Owens wrote in an early diary entry, then answered: “Well, old girl, you’ll have to get down and dig.”
Shortly after suffering a mental breakdown Owens began creating dystopian sculptures and complex cosmologies, developing a unique decorative style based on Orientalist inclinations. His curiosity became solidified and stratified by the geocentric attitudes of mankind and not by gravity or chemicals.
After abandoning the academic traditions he’d studied he devoted himself completely to making preternatural artworks. Observe in this early work how the three witches prepare ointments that they will smear over their bodies to enable them to fly.
He was later drawn to worn and splintered materials like stained, threadbare scraps with burn marks and holes; gestures and materials treated as fossils. Books wrapped in real rabbit’s fur; recipes for malevolent curries to feed one’s creditors.
Owens's fantastic many-figured sculptures interweave naked, idealized figures and grotesque grimacing gnomes. One was only permitted to approach them barefooted. This marked the end of Owens's art career in Germany.
Following his dismissal, he indulged in the construction of so-called voids imbued with alchemical and zodiacal symbolisms. An argument brewed in his mind as he watched a Mexican jumping bean twitch and hop. He believed that stones contain centuries of cryptic information and that their imprints and images are fossils of an enigmatic cosmic history.
Working on mammoth sheets of handmade Chilean paper, his talismans of human hair knotted to ward off bad luck suggest valleys bathed in the light of invisible moons, an astonishing black mass, and mythical unicorns swallowing and being swallowed. This flat-footed approach perfectly suited the muted sense of apocalypse of the time, incited by nuclear meltdowns, hostage crises, and gas shortages.
As he pursued his central ambition—to make painting as eerie and disquiet as it can be—he increasingly moved the medium into four dimensions. His language-based drawings not only twist and curve but enclose, surround, and encircle. His poetic titles rarely clarify the complex themes in his densely layered works. His vocabulary of form is based on the painter simply taking a fish, a snail, and a butterfly, and shaping a new mythical creature.
His objects have the look of meteorites threatening our existence. Wondrous micro-landscapes illustrating nature’s delicacy. A series of repeated, interpenetrating pistons and quasi-visceral orifices. A pilfering of words and phrases from encyclopedic French dictionaries. Hypnotic spirals of colored oils and wax in networks of interlocking rooms. A clover flower picked by the poet from his father’s grave; grapes eaten by the Christ child; barely legible handwriting.
Shown here is his final diary entry, his trademark exaggerated calligraphy conveying an over-emotive commitment to carrying out verbs. Note the way he melds a ghostly figure with the word "oleander"!
(This faux biography is composed of language taken from the many didactic art cards I’ve recorded on my phone when visiting museum and gallery exhibits. The name of the author is an anagram of my own name [middle name: Vincent]. The photo is a passport photo taken at the height of the pandemic when haircuts were off limits; a relative tells me I look like a French art thief.)