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JoAnn Lowney (American, b. 1948). Oil on wood panel and frame, n.d. Signature on lower right. A marvelous trompe l'oeil painting of an arched window in a stone wall with a Green Man visage emerging from verdant foliage framing the opening, Green Man's bearded visage emerging from clusters of leaves at the apex of the window's arch. A beetle crawls up the left side of the window, and a lizard perches upon the windowsill, peering out to the picturesque view beyond - a seemingly endless landscape with a rooted evergreen surrealistically floating in the blue skies above the purple earth below. The name Green Man stems from the vegetation that surrounds and sometimes sprouts from his head. Similar foliage-embellished faces were created as far back as ancient Rome and began to emerge in early European churches during the first centuries CE; however, they reached their pinnacle during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the golden eras of church and cathedral building. Lowney's imagery elegantly extends to the frame and demonstrates her impressive ability to trick the eye with optical illusions. Size: 36.75" L x 32.75" W (93.3 cm x 83.2 cm)

Some posit that the Green Men were associated with or 'rooted' in imagery of the Greek god, Dionysus, (Roman Bacchus) - the god of wine, fertility, and religious ecstasy who was traditionally depicted wearing a wreath of vines and leaves. Others claim that he is a personification of Nature - or perhaps related to pagan tree worship. Regardless of its iconographical origin, this is fabulous painting, replete with impressive artistry and intriguing layers of symbolic meaning.

Artist's Biography - "Jo-Ann Lowney was born in 1948 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. As a child she lived in Europe, spent her high school years in Miami and in her twenties moved to Portland, Maine where she attended the Main College of Art. She then studied five years with the National Academician, Frank Mason, at The Art Student's League of New York. The atmosphere of the League was as formative for Lowney as it was for so many artists, their ghosts haunt it still, Pollock, lumbering around as a busboy in the school's cafeteria, was very aware of visits from Arshile Gorky, who had once taught at the league and still dropped by for coffee. Painters like Rothko, Robert Henri, Georgia O'Keefe, Reginald Marsh were all students there. Lowney met her husband, painter Joel Coplin while attending the League classes in New York City. Since 1986, they have made their home and studios at the East Side Art artist's community in Mesa, Arizona.

In 1995 Jo-Ann Lowney was awarded the Visual Art Fellowship in Two Dimensional Media by the Arizona Commission on the Arts. In 1996 she was awarded an Artists in Residency Grant by the Arizona Commission on the Arts for the mural project, A History of Superstition Mountain.

Lowney's richly painted visionary landscapes and her figurative bronzes evoke a sense of the magic of the natural world and the potency of the human creative unconscious. Her work is featured in many private and corporate collections in this country and abroad, including the McDonald's Corporation, Nordstroms in Scottsdale, and Universal Studios in Hollywood, California." (Source: Jo-Ann Lowney website)

Provenance: ex-private Bishop Family Trust collection, the Trust of the late Bill Bishop, a noted antiquarian with shops in Scottsdale, Arizona and Allenspark, Colorado, USA, acquired before 2010

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#174761

Signature on lower right. Scuffs and abrasions to peripheries of painted frame, and a few to the stone wall painted on the panel. This said, the central imagery is not impacted.