A Portrait of the Artist: Tory Cowles

Tory Cowles's triptych "Azure" hangs on the exterior of the Sheraton Hotel in Crystal City, Virginia as part of the city's public art Art Walls outdoor exhibit. The pieces have been scaled up to mural size and exemplify the spontaneity and grativas of the artist's abstract body of work. They are on display for the next five years.

Cowles approaches all of her larger than life artwork with the inquiring viewer in mind while also indulging in the unexpected joys of abstract painting.

"The process is wonderful and satisfying, and I want my paintings to have the best chance of eliciting a response and having an impact," said Cowles who believes that all significant and successful artwork emerges when the artist "paints from the heart."

"Bright colors make me happy and give me energy. Looking at paintings helps me to process emotions. It's like dreaming or meditating," said Cowles. "I value looseness and spontaneity because they make me feel alive, and there is a real-ness and honesty about them."

Providing a window into her intuitive yet calibrated process, she describes one of the pieces in her current solo show at the Target Gallery in the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia, "#667," in depth.

"The colors in the piece talk to each other. The subtler colors next to the stronger ones let you enjoy these different states in succession. You can dwell on the drips of the off-whites on the canvas and then zone in on the strong reds and pinks in the center. Bott areas hold their own."

Cowles paints the way she does because she wants people to be able to enjoy her paintings on multiple levels.

"The paintings have more substance when you are able to focus on different aspects of them depending on your mood. It's very difficult to paint loosely and make it work. Part of the paint drips, and the shapes become unpredictable, but the work stems from and embodies a spontaneity that is interesting, pleasing and makes me feel more free in myself."

This year, Cowles was selected by the Art League in Alexandria and is looking forward to a discussion of "Why does art move you?" from 6pm - 8 pm on July 28, 2011 at the Target Gallery.

As for herself, she encourages us to interact with and examine her work first-hand.

"Put your thumb over any part of the painting, and you will see the color relationships change. That's what is fascinating to me," she says.

A resident artist at the Torpedo Factory Art Center for the past six years, Cowles shares her studio with two artists whose work she describes as representational compared to her own. She finds their art equally engrossing regardless of style or form.

"An interesting set of color juxtapositions and placements are always compelling, and you can draw analogies to the process of abstraction," she said.

She is currently showing her work at the Glenview Mansion Art Gallery in Rockville, Maryland alongside the OUTLOUD Artists, a group of abstract painters in the Washington, DC-area. studied and painted at the Yellow Barn Studio and Gallery in Glen Echo, Maryland with Helen Corning who steered them all toward abstraction.

"Helen was a fanstastic teacher because she did not tell us what to do but simply identified problems. As a result, everyone's work wound up looking different because students had to find solutions for themselves."

Prolific, versatile and attuned to discovery, Cowles was a member of the Touchstone Gallery and maintains regular representation at the Longview Gallery and Plan B Gallery in Washington, DC. She will also exhibit her work in a solo show at Glenview Mansion in August 2011.

The daughter of an architect and a sculptor, Cowles was surrounded by art while growing up. She attended Bennington College in Vermont where she studied elementary education, and after a few stints in the restaurant industry and later the federal government, she became a carpenter's apprentice and started taking art classes and painting portraits and landscapes in Washington, DC.

"At the time, I did a lot of 3D stuff. I just loved making things. My father was a modern architect, and I grew up in a modern house," said the artist who still creates large interactive mixed media pieces, one of which is on view at Glenview Mansion this month. "Modern houses are often unexpected. As you move through them, she shapes change, and they become like abstract paintings. Working with these changes became more interesting to me than trying to make a landscape or a portrait at face value."

"When I took an abstract art class with Helen Corning, I fell in love with abstract," she said. The rest is history and more thought-provoking, playful juxtapositions to come.

To visit the artist's website, click here.