Short Bio
Pennsylvania artist Lolly Owens is an internationally exhibited artist who creates imaginative abstract landscapes and figures. She takes the hesitancy out of creating or buying art by offering one-on-one consultation.
Statement
The relationship between me and my work is tenderly personal. I silence my constant inner critic and take the opportunity to focus on myself and learn what I feel. I do this by meditating before I begin working. It’s a ritual: move my parrot and myself to the studio, take a cup of tea, arrange the supplies, open the blinds/window, add music, meditate, and then begin painting or sketchbook work.
Discovering what I am feeling is exciting and sometimes surprising. With my new awareness, I experiment with various acrylic paints, gels, fiber pastes, mica flakes, charcoal, found/recycled items, and most recently water-based oil paints. I do not use digital art as I enjoy using my hands in a painterly manner, like a gardener putting her hands in the Earth’s soil. I use these materials as most are water based and kinder to our planet.
The emotional base of my work are the environmental challenges we face. My never-ending ideas come from news reports, science-based books and native culture tradition and stories.
Biography
We are often unaware that we live in gaps between stories that play like CDs in our minds. These stories are from our past or current news reports or from social media. They often repeat themselves preventing us from knowing who we are, what we can do, or enjoying life.
Lolly Owens paints the story that comes from quieting the mind and entering that gap. Owens becomes an explorer who arrives through the meditation process. She gets to be a visual interpreter creating art that allows a glimpse into a different perspective; awareness; or the sense of being in a place of mystery. She hopes her art inspires others to look within to see light in a world often filled with darkness.
In 2020, when the pandemic closed our world, Owens, her husband, a parrot, a cat and drove from their home of over 20 years in Florida to Pennsylvania, first Pittsburgh for one year and now Canonsburg which is south of downtown Pittsburgh. In Florida Owens taught abstract art at Art Center Sarasota, Art Center Manatee, and the Longboat Center for the Arts. In 2019 she was Area 3 Director of the Florida Artists Group, Inc. founded in 1949. Area 3 planned and hosted the 69th Annual Exhibition and Symposium at the Ringling College of Art & Design which was attended by hundreds of Florida state artists.
Now that they are in Canonsburg, Owens is re-establishing her abstract art teaching in a private studio located in the Rauch Building on Washington Road in Canonsburg, PA. In 2024 she founded the PA Chapter of the National Association of Women Artists, the first professional women's fine art organization in the United States. She serves as its president .
She is represented by JJ Gillespie Gallery, est. 1832, in McMurray, PA
Her work is displayed both nationally and internationally, most recently in St. Alberts Gallery in St. Alberts, Canada with the International Society of Experimental Artists (ISEA). She is a Nautilus Fellow Member of ISEA which means six of her works have been accepted into international exhibits. She is also a member of the National Association of Pen Women, art member of Santa Clara, CA branch and the McMurray Art League
In addition to PA and FL, Owens has lived in New Jersey, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Washington where nature, the landscapes and master artists have informed her art. She is a graduate of Chatham College (now University) in Pittsburgh.
