Works By Jeff Rowland

In 2000 Rowland enrolled on a B/TEC HND course in Advertising/Illustration at Newcastle School of Art and Design, choosing to specialise in the area of Visualization in his second year of study. Whilst attending the higher educational course, Rowland had the opportunity to work on many live briefs, and during this time his original designs were responsible for him collecting a NEPA award (North East Print Association)

On graduating from Newcastle, Rowland wanted to make one more concerted effort at carving out a successful career in art, and decided to exhibit a collection of his work in a Northumberland gallery. On the back of this exposure, he was invited to showcase this artwork at the London Affordable, where Rowland sold out in just the one day. This serves as a catalyst for his subsequent successes, as shortly afterwards the artist was asked to exhibit in Edinburgh and Dublin, where he sold more work; and therein introduced his work to an even wider audience.

Rowland finds huge inspiration from the part the elements play in conveying raw emotions and innate sensitivity, which stems from a love of film and observing how inclemency in weather conditions are often featured as a backdrop in scenes of the heart in big screen adaptations. Rowland cites The Bridges of Madison County and The Road to Perdition as just two examples whereby the heightened sense of rain coincides with the severing of key relationships in both celluloid tales. It’s this implied use of the rain in cinema that fuelled his very own creative imagination when committing his own visual thoughts to a canvas setting.

This preoccupation with the emotional layers and dimensions used to such dramatic effect in film continues with Rowland suggesting that he injects street signs into a lot of his compositions so as to infer a symbolism in a certain relationship played out by two of his lead characters found in one of his pieces. For instance the awareness of two street signs pointing in differing directions could well imply that the couple are splitting up. Or perhaps, on the contrary. They could be coming together. Or maybe even pictorially suggestive of an affair. This he leaves to the eye of the beholder on each occasion. Having said that Rowland constructs a large percentage of his artistic tales on a street corner, or a converging of two streets. To underline this sense of pitting two parties together for whatever reasons the viewer may arrive at.

Rowland is a strong believer in getting to the heart of the matter, the root cause. If you’re going to paint a scene, make sure that you’ve lived it first, so that you come from an informed background rather than surmising and presuming your way through a creative study. With this in mind the artist mentions Billy Connelly, who once famously mused that he hated songs written about Scotland by people living in London. People who ostensibly had never even ventured across Hadrian’s Wall.

By way of providing evidence and concluding that the proof is very much in the pudding, Rowland tells of a series of painting he did focusing on trawler men. To be best placed to construct a visual story based on these guys and their line of work, the artist journey out into the North Sea on their boat with them, sketching what he saw whilst they went about their business. Soaking wet, freezing cold and stinking of fish, Rowland captured the very essence of the story he later visualized. He now uses this demanding approach to his rain painting on every occasion, and given the North East’s relationship with despondent weather and a plethora of low fronts coming in off the sea, he has a constant rich seam of inspiration and backdrop for his pieces.

Lights and reflections as the rain teams down from the heavens and bounce off street surfaces add to his repertoire and regularly seek these physical situations out. Rowland admits to having something of an obsession with architecture and can be found perpetually fixated on buildings wherever he travels. Bars, pub fronts, restaurants all pique Rowland’s avid interest, the former he always adds a personal note to when translating what he sees and feels, artistically. With Celtic lineage he likes to plunder Irish or Scottish names for his fictitious, street corner-dwelling bars and pubs. A quick sketch and/or photograph later, and Rowland is ready to capture that vista and cement in unique canvas form.