Owain’s passion for creating highly detailed, realistic painting developed at an early age and continued through university studying fine art where he developed his style, experimenting with various techniques and mediums primarily focusing on the human body.
After several years away from painting his passion returned and he changed his focus from the human body to his first love which is wildlife. Influenced by artists such as Alan Hunt, John Banovich and David Smith, he began to further develop his style using new techniques and switching
from acrylic to oil paint.
The switch to oil paint facilitated Owain’s desire to achieve a greater sense of depth and realism in his paintings with the aim of creating beautiful representations of the animal world.
Owain’s technique is painstaking and requires many hours of dedication to get the desired result. Once the reference images have been chosen, which in itself can take many hours the composition is decided upon and the drawing established. Working in oil paint on canvas he begins by creating the under-painting, blocking in areas of mid tones before working in layers over the top, starting with shadows and gradually increasing the level of detail in each layer, blending and highlighting each layer until the animal emerges.
Owains work also touches on the huge problems that the natural world faces. Whilst still aiming to represent the beauty of wildlife his work often includes hints of a darker tone, exploring our relationship with nature and the decline in numbers of many species due to poaching and our relentless destruction of natural habitats.
“What fascinates me is our impact on the natural world. My recent work seeks to represent the beauty of wildlife, with hints of a darker tone that explore our relationship with nature”