From her childhood at the Jersey Shore, to her life as an artist on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, Laura McGowan has been drawn to the creative life. Her realistic oil paintings are her way of capturing meaningful moments in the natural world, translating the emotions of these scenes into art.
McGowan came to her love for oil painting relatively late in life. “I was shy as a child, preferring to observe the world around me,” she remembers. “I spent almost every summer day at the beach, but also enjoyed quiet pursuits like drawing and painting.” A good student academically, she didn’t see fine art as the most practical career choice. McGowan decided to combine her skills in mathematics and art by studying architecture at Cornell University. But after a year, she had second thoughts. “I was really more interested in interior design. One of my favorite things to do as a teenager was to redecorate rooms, both physically and in my head. I’d been afraid of not fully using my academic strengths, but interior design was what I was most interested in.” After switching majors and then colleges, McGowan graduated from Pratt Institute in 1984 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in interior design.
The following years saw McGowan designing corporate interiors in New York and London, then switching gears and obtaining a Masters Degree in Education, moving to Virginia and getting married, and working as a first grade teacher and finally an elementary art teacher.
“Through it all, I always felt the urge to create,” says McGowan. “I dabbled in a myriad of creative hobbies – drawing, watercolors, knitting, pottery, sewing, printmaking, decorating, gardening, cooking, and playing the violin.” But she wasn’t passionate enough about any of the hobbies to choose one and take it further.
Then, in 2011, McGowan enrolled in an oil painting class taught by a local artist, Carole Boggemann Peirson, and was hooked. “I loved it right from the start,” she recalls, “and knew I’d finally found a creative outlet I felt passionate about, that I wanted to continue to explore indefinitely.” McGowan studied with Peirson for four years, as well as taking workshops with artists Valerie Craig and Sara Linda Poly. Improving her skills, McGowan focused on painting the beautiful and sometimes moody marshes and fields of the rural Eastern Shore of Virginia, as well as intimate still lifes of natural objects. Recalling her love of the ocean and the endless summer days spent watching the waves, she began painting seascapes, capturing both the calm and the revitalizing feeling of a day at the beach. McGowan paints mostly alla prima, or “wet on wet”, although she may also spend days going back over and over a painting to achieve the effect she wants. She is drawn to many styles of art, but is most influenced by the artists of the Barbizon School, such as Daubigny and Courbet, as well as the American Tonalists George Inness, Charles Warren Eaton and James Whistler.
In 2016, ready to make the leap from teaching, to life as a full time artist, McGowan retired early to pursue her dreams and begin a new career that she loves. She has participated in shows such as the Rittenhouse Square Fine Art Show in Philadelphia, the Stockley Gardens Arts Festival in Norfolk, VA, and the Local Color Show in Easton, MD. Her work is shown in galleries locally as well as in Delaware and New Jersey, and she teaches oil painting at a local arts center. She has won awards in shows of the Eastern Shore Art League and the Paint Onancock Plein Air Event.
McGowan’s days are spent painting in her studio at the Historic Onancock School, out in the field painting en plein air with friends, teaching, or traveling to art festivals. “Although I’m grateful for all the directions in which life’s taken me,” says McGowan, “I feel very lucky to have finally found my passion in oil painting.”
View Laura McGowan’s collection at the Stravitz Gallery.
