“The visual poetry of Trey Dowell”
by Yu-Kai Lin, photos by Valentin Sivyakov
Trey Dowell’s art is poetry in motion. Glimpses of animated figures, of reflected memories, of completely incomplete vignettes as his visual vocabulary. His is the language of folklore and fiction, autobiography and adventure, fantasy and fable.
Painted outlines dissolve into thick paint drips. Globs of color saturate the canvas like a beatnik in search of common ground on untethered lands. Graphite and glitter krump and jump across the surface unencumbered, unconstrained, uninhibited.
Trey’s youthful memories and wandersome spontaneity are found most prominently in everlasting arms (48 x 48 inches). “Bad habits” sprayed atop a flamed torch shouldered by a buck-naked fire fighter protagonist graffiti’ing the canvas with good habits, perched on a three dimensional checkered black & white concrete tiled-floor morphing into a background of aerosolized and acrylic cacophonies on which a Naruto-style side kick with “SHOGUN” above their head spins next to burning flames of red stroked blaze devolving into a semblance of a hatted shadowed-man, perhaps the man behind the work -
pulling the strings, creating the cacophonous symphony of chaos whilst observing the intensely playful and ingenuous mind of one Trey Dowell as a collaged figure of an afro’ed boondocks Huey-stylized fly boy jacketed with number 47 imprinted — perhaps the Tale of the 47 Ronin a somewhat true story about revenge and loyalty, a shogunate warrior-samurai overseeing a “poems” entrance entrancing into the universe of Adventure Time “Finn” above a tree structure on top of which a shiv weapon knives the bed of the halo’ed hangman with its angel wings as he peers above his glowing soul, boogieman-goblin looking on while a capped graffiti anime hero with frenetic and haphazardly coiffed “good” hair looks on as he ponders the meaning behind the meaning of this squared 48 x 48 acrylic, spray painted, colored pencil, collaged and glittered on canvas artwork entitled everlasting arms.
Paint is Dowell’s everlasting arms and we are enduringly broadened.
