The Brain on Art Series: Introducing Jo Gowan
Jo Gowan is from the City of Kawartha Lakes and spent time at the Kawartha Art Gallery from 2018-19 through an arts administration co-op position. Jo was so successful in her Gallery co-op position that the Gallery then hired Jo to work at the Gallery.
Currently obtaining a BFA with Honours in Visual Arts at the University of Victoria, Jo is now a multidisciplinary artist based on the unceded lands of the Lekwungen, W̱SÁNEĆ, and Esquimalt peoples (Victoria, BC).
With a practice that primarily exists in the realm of painting, Jo’s talents also expand into sculpture, writing, and installation.
Jo has exhibited in group and solo shows in spaces such as SAW Centre (Ottawa, ON), SweetPea Gallery (Victoria, BC), Audain Gallery (Victoria, BC), as well as an online exhibit in 2020 at Kawartha Art Gallery entitled, The Sound of Colour.
"This constantly growing collection of pieces titled The Sound of Colour was born out of my effort to resort back to the core values of painting and expression, why I started in the first place. These paintings are renditions of visualizations caused by synesthesia, a neurological condition which causes overlapping sensory experiences. For me personally, this occurs between sound and colour."
View the exhibit on the Gallery’s website: The Sound of Colour — Hanna Gowan — Kawartha Art Gallery https://ecs.page.link/7pEff
Since her days with Kawartha Art Gallery, Jo has continued her work in arts administration through youth art education, community art facilitation, and more recently, administration at an arts/environmental non-profit.
Jo’s thoughts on the Arts:
I think acknowledging the value of the arts, and supporting it with resources, time, and energy is ultimately a dedication to the wellness of the spirit of our communities. Art informs, invigorates, challenges, compliments, and enriches everything about our lives and the world we live in.
Not only is experiencing art immensely valuable, but equally so is the act of creating it. I believe that engaging with our creativity fosters our social, intellectual, and emotional awareness of ourselves and each other.
In my time spent as an art educator and community art facilitator, I’ve seen the confidence that is instilled from permission to express, investigate, and ask questions through a creative medium. Art can allow stories to be told in a form that is truer than words allow.
Similarly, my own art practice has intrinsically shaped the way I exist in the world. It has granted me a space to put action to imagination, to move at my own pace, to form a relationship with materials, and at the core it has allowed me to exist wholly as I am.
We are tender, curious, and passionate people when our creativity is nurtured, and that way of being is something that will always be valuable to the world around us.
