Rowan Carey

Rowan Carey was born in 1987 and has lived in Washington State his entire life. He currently lives in Snohomish with his wife and four sons. He has been an artist in varying ways his entire life but has become a dedicated oil painter in the past decade. Rowan may be what you’d consider a “self-educated” artist. In today’s day and age of information and ways to learn, Rowan is continually studying and practicing how to better his artistic abilities. Over the years, those ways have come through the form of books, instructional videos, workshops, and mentoring. One of his recent art mentors is Mark Boedges, a very accomplished oil painter who studied under Richard Schmid. 

Rowan finds himself gravitating toward looser painting styles. A style that has a strong sense of realism, but painted in a way that utilizes abstraction. Rowan achieves this look by understanding how our eyes see things in real life. Using a variety of tools to create both physical and visual texture, interesting edges, and an understanding of how we perceive light. 

Artist Statement: “I've traveled to many parts of the United States. I’ve seen the majority of what every state has to offer. Many are filled with grand beauty and interesting history, but nothing is quite like the feeling I get when I’m back home. Home, for me, is the Pacific Northwest, and home is what inspires me to paint. 

The Northwest is like a sacred realm, showing endless examples of nature working in perfect harmony. It has a personality all of its own. It is vast and mysterious, it is gray and somber, but it is also clear and vibrant. It’s a place with many moods, and depending on the day, or sometimes the hour, the Pacific Northwest has no shortage of ways to surprise you with its beauty. 

What inspires me is finding ways to capture that mood and personality in a painting. Finding ways to show the beauty of a gray day or the power of raging falls. Finding ways to portray the quiet of a deep forest or the scale and ruggedness of the mountains. There’s a feeling or mood that I’m trying to capture with all my work. More important than painting every leaf on every branch, or every ripple in a stream, I want the viewer to FEEL the presence of what they’re looking at. I want their mind to fill in the blanks of what’s not tediously rendered, and let the texture, the brushwork, the pops of color, the edges, the composition, tell the story.”