Artist Statement
The human being is my subject and I try to focus on seeing what is there. I prefer to strip away the story and let the form tell a story of its own. I take the position of unknowing observer in order to discover reality. I find beauty in the body represented as a moment in time. It is a moment composed of many hours, or even months. This one body in this one time becomes a timeless presence, unique, irreplaceable, forever, and never to occur again.
–Bernard Rowan (1952-2016)
“Bernard Rowan’s sculptures, for over 20 years, stand out because of the highly energized surfaces of form. Rowan almost never touches the piece without the model present, looking with a subtle eye at the energetic body and sculpting, in a literal sense, what he sees in terms of the play of light on plane, on skin. The effect is not Cubist, since the form itself is not fractured, nor is it Modernist. Rowan’s attention to the underlying gesture and proportions of his figures are locked in as tight as any Greek carved statue. The result is a fusion of classical strength with a level of animated form that is powerful and rare.”
–Bob Cylatt, curator of “Beyond Rodin: New Directions in Contemporary Figurative Sculpture” (2012) at the Rye Arts Center