About Gwen
Gwen hails from the breath-taking landscapes of North West Wales.
Her artwork is marked by expressive gestural brushstrokes that capture her emotional response to the experience of being in the landscape.
The materiality and sensual qualities of acrylic paint are important elements of her process. She likes to capture initial emotions and gestural marks in her sketchbooks while outdoors in nature.
Back in her home studio, she develops those ideas from remembered landscapes onto prepared canvases, still retaining the elements and expressions initially caught outdoors.
The painting develops through an almost unconscious process.
“ As and artist, I am constantly in search of something within the act of creation. I paint from the landscapes etched in my memory, cherishing how paint can express what words cannot.”
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At Home in the Landscape
Gwen Owen is an artist shaped by the dramatic coastal landscapes of North West Wales and the quiet rhythms of her farming upbringing near Criccieth. The open fields, shifting weather, and steady presence of animals from her childhood continue to inform her paintings of horses, hares, and shoreline scenes—works that carry both the rawness of nature and the softness of memory.
She studied Fine Art at the University of Glyndŵr in North Wales, a formative chapter that expanded her creative language and encouraged experimentation in scale, technique, and material. Today, Gwen works from home and at shared studio at Stiwdio Gwennel at Parc Glynllifon, where she is part of a vibrant community of makers and artists. Her practice continues to evolve through independent exploration, regular sketching trips to the coast, and ongoing exhibitions across the region.
Working primarily in acrylic, Gwen is drawn to the tactile, sensual qualities of paint. Her process often begins outdoors—capturing fleeting gestures, weather impressions, and emotional responses in her sketchbooks—before developing these marks into layered, atmospheric paintings on prepared canvases. Memory, nostalgia, and dreamlike recollection guide her hand, resulting in calm, fluid compositions where horses, tides, and landscapes dissolve into sensation rather than strict representation.
“My work explores the places where sea, land, and living creatures blur into memory. Through soft, atmospheric colour and fluid brushwork, I translate tides, weather, and movement into quiet emotional spaces—moments that linger long after we’ve left the shore.”
Rooted in her lifelong connection to the coast, Gwen’s paintings offer a sense of stillness within movement, inviting viewers into the wild, elemental landscapes she calls home.
