I Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea

Catalogue text for the exhibition «I Didn't Mean to Go to Sea", Telemark Kunstnersenter, 2001.

Original text by Elisabeth Austad Asser. 

Translated into English by Barbara H. Reitan.

What is the essential meaning of our existence? This fundamental question has been studied throughout the ages, and is also the central theme addressed in Marilyn Ann Owens' exhibition entitled "I Didn't Mean to Go to Sea".

In this exhibition, childhood, the search for identity, violence and oppression are communicated through oil paintings, prints and objects. Owens presents a physically perceptible expression, which is concerned with the human conditions of our existence. She explores the elements that constitutes an individual, in cases where it seldom can be determined whether the environment seeks to strengthen or to destroy that individual. Thus, her pictures focus on the existential forces into which man inevitably become incorporated. In Owens' work the consequence of these forces leads to a tension between the identity of the perpetrator and that of the victim. This tension is also reflected in the representation of implements as figurative elements – one can never be certain whether they function as weapons of destruction or as implements of creation. In this way, the conflict between power and impotence also appears as a fundamental theme.

The people portrayed in the later works are removed from their scheduled spheres and placed in specific surroundings. Time and again the sea is presented as a potential element of escape. But whether this is a valid solution for the individual, or whether it is in fact an evasion of sorts, remains unanswered in Owens' work.

Owens' works have a strongly narrative character and they bear evidence of being part of a process. The motifs appear in the actual relationship between the various image components, and thus relate more than they reveal. In this way, a dialogue emerges between the pictorial elements and the viewer. In some of the works, the narrative aspect of the figures is further emphasized by the introduction of writing, which becomes an essential component of each picture's theme. Just as the figurative elements appear on the picture surface, now and again, as abstract and surrealistic forms, so the words also become signs or symbols, the essence of which is determined by the viewer's own associations and frames of reference.

Owens has developed a particular, autobiographic, expressive style, which alternates between the suggestive and fragmentary and the more explicit and complex.