“Facts persuade the head; beauty moves the heart.”
Between Cornfields and Color Fields
Tom Owen’s journey as a fine art painter began in the quiet corners of Fairfield, Ohio, long before he would exhibit in some of the country’s most recognized art destinations. His earliest creative moments were shaped not in prestigious studios, but on a card table tucked into the corner of his childhood living room, where pencils and paints were as commonplace as household furniture. Surrounded by a family of skilled makers—his father a craftsman and his mother a gifted seamstress—Owen developed a respect for persistence, experimentation, and hands-on problem solving. These foundational lessons shaped an enduring creative ethos: when something doesn’t work, learn from it and try again. These values, imparted through practice and encouragement rather than instruction, continue to guide his process today.
Owen’s formal academic path took a nontraditional route for an artist. He earned a degree in English literature, then spent decades navigating the world of corporate education, ultimately working as an executive in learning and development for a Fortune 500 company. Despite his corporate title, art was never far from his reach. Frequent business travel became an unexpected opportunity to immerse himself in galleries and exhibitions across the country. These detours allowed Owen to connect with artists and gallerists, gaining firsthand insight into both the creative and commercial aspects of the art world. All the while, he continued to paint and exhibit in cities such as New York, Santa Fe, Richmond, and Miami. In 2021, he stepped away from corporate life and embraced full-time painting, further deepening his commitment to his studio practice and his collaboration with collectors, designers, and consultants nationwide.
Today, Owen’s work lives in private and corporate collections throughout the United States and Europe. He has become known for his distinctive fusion of visual intensity and emotional resonance. Based in Cincinnati, with strong connections to the Los Angeles art scene, Owen now operates at the intersection of intuitive expression and thoughtful design. His paintings are not only compositions of shape and pigment but also visual experiences that ask viewers to pause, observe, and reflect on how color, light, and space affect their perception of the world.
Tom Owen: Precision, Perception, and Pigment
Although largely self-taught, Owen draws deeply from his academic background in both literature and psychology. These disciplines lend an intellectual and emotional richness to his creative output, informing the way he thinks about meaning, narrative, and the human response to visual stimuli. His work centers around a fundamental question: how do we experience color, and what does it reveal about how we understand the spaces we occupy? Rather than creating scenes or representational images, Owen focuses on the visceral impact of hue, transparency, and saturation, crafting compositions that invite viewers to slow down and actively engage with subtle transitions and bold chromatic structures.
Owen’s technique involves the use of vinyl flashe emulsion, a highly pigmented, water-based paint that allows him to layer translucent colors across his surfaces. By using tools such as squeegees and hard edges, he builds compositions that appear deceptively simple but contain nuanced shifts in tone and depth. These gradual changes create visual vibrations that alter depending on the viewer’s position and the lighting conditions. The result is an immersive viewing experience in which flat surfaces take on a spatial and emotional dimensionality, often blurring the line between painting and atmosphere. His use of color is never arbitrary; every tone is carefully selected to evoke a specific sensation or to challenge conventional expectations of harmony and contrast.
Urban environments have long served as inspiration for Owen, but not in the literal sense. Instead, the structured forms and saturated palettes found in cities are translated into his canvases through abstraction and geometry. In many of his pieces, color becomes a proxy for emotion, while line and shape provide structure and rhythm. Owen’s paintings often radiate a warmth and balance that suggest a deeply personal engagement with his materials. His distinctive approach, which merges elements of minimalism with bold visual presence, has positioned him as a painter whose work exists not only to be seen but also to be experienced on a sensorial level.
Memory in Every Hue
Among Owen’s many projects, one recent commission stands apart as both deeply personal and profoundly meaningful. Titled A Fuji Wish, A Daughter Remembered, this work was initiated by a grieving couple who lost their 25-year-old daughter unexpectedly. The daughter had long dreamed of climbing Mt. Fuji, a goal she was never able to fulfill in her lifetime. In her memory, the family traveled from various parts of the United States to Japan, ascending the mountain together at sunrise to scatter her ashes. They approached Owen with a powerful request: to transform that emotional experience into a painting that could hold space for memory, grief, and enduring love.
What makes this piece especially poignant is Owen’s process. Rather than interpreting the event through generalized symbolism or personal projection, he chose to work directly from photographs taken during the family’s journey. He is extracting individual pixels of pure color from those images—specific digital fingerprints of the moment—and using them to mix his paint. This method ensures that every hue in the final piece carries with it a direct link to the original experience. The painting, executed in flashe emulsion on a 24-by-45-inch canvas, is still in its early stages. Yet even in its inception, it serves as an example of Owen’s belief in the transformative power of art: that facts may speak to the intellect, but beauty moves the heart.
Owen sees this commission not simply as a project, but as a responsibility. His goal is to create a work that transcends aesthetics, becoming instead a visual vessel for remembrance and hope. In his own words, art enables us to “understand ourselves and each other,” to perceive the invisible forces that shape our lives. This philosophy guides his entire practice, where every layer of paint becomes a meditation on loss, connection, and becoming. Rather than simply marking a moment, A Fuji Wish, A Daughter Remembered aspires to eternalize it, allowing viewers to stand in quiet communion with color and memory.
Tom Owen: Ritual, Rhythm, and the Everyday Studio
Owen’s daily routine reflects the same intentionality and rhythm that define his paintings. His days begin early, often with email correspondence and social media updates before heading to the studio by mid-morning. There, he paints in focused intervals—usually two to three hours at a stretch—punctuated by moments of rest, walking his dogs, or regrouping at home. In the afternoons, he returns to the studio for another session of concentrated work, occasionally hosting studio visits or wrapping up communications. By late afternoon, he transitions out of his studio environment, ready to begin again the next day. This structured rhythm allows him to balance creative flow with the practical demands of a full-time art practice.
Within this discipline, Owen cultivates space for intuition and reflection. Although he maintains a consistent schedule, the content of each day can vary depending on the materials he’s working with or the emotional tone of the project at hand. His process is not only technical but also contemplative. The layering of color, the selection of tools, and the interaction with light all require a high level of attention and patience. This approach speaks to his belief that art is not just a product but a practice—an ongoing conversation between intention and accident, control and discovery. His work often begins with a specific visual question or challenge, but the act of painting itself becomes a search for meaning, clarity, or resonance.
At present, his focus remains firmly on completing A Fuji Wish, A Daughter Remembered, a project that represents both a culmination of his aesthetic skills and a deep alignment with his personal values. It is a commission that demands emotional sensitivity, technical precision, and philosophical depth—all qualities that Owen brings to every canvas he touches. Looking forward, he remains committed to producing work that offers viewers more than just visual pleasure. His goal is to craft pieces that evoke contemplation, open new ways of seeing, and ultimately deepen our understanding of the world we live in and the people we share it with.
