Bruce Gowans

Bruce Gowans (b.1959) lives and works in Limerick. He is a self-taught artist and attended Art Continuation at the Limerick College of Further Education. He was born in Northern Ontario, Canada, lived in New York and later in Scotland.

Throughout his life and career, he has travelled extensively and experienced many cultures and environments and is influenced by the interaction of man and nature. He uses the mediums of primarily Charcoal and Oil painting to capture these natural and semi natural moments.

Gowans often uses black and white, and light and dark to focus on a particular subject, a concept or technique. This enables him to capture the presence, mood, and interaction of the subject within its environment. A common theme in Bruce’s work is the development of natural/semi-natural portraiture where the feature or subject is the primary point of his attention. His work seems more sculpted than drawn or painted.

Remembering, Berry’s Den comes from the artist’s encounter with the subject during a woodland walk in Fife, Scotland with his mother, just after his father’s death during the pandemic in 2020. You can see the strength and at the same time the vulnerability in the image. Once deeply rooted and part of the landscape, but slowly becoming more exposed as time erodes the surrounds.