Kirk Gower

Kirk Gower is a visual artist based in Vancouver, BC. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University. Selected exhibitions and awards include the GAM Gallery (2014), fourth-place winner for Painting on the Edge at the Federation Gallery (2018), and a regional finalist in the 2018 Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series.

In his practice, Kirk explores queer identity in contemporary portraiture and images. The paintings he creates often begin as sumptuous, highly rendered works of art. This typically consists of queer bodies in fantastical spaces, adding a sense of surrealism to the work and enticing the viewer by using dreamlike imagery. By doing so, he transports the queer figure out of a fixed state of time and into a realm where it appears that they have always existed. This is primarily done by employing traditional symbols such as flowers to exaggerate and bring forward emotions related to the figure.

Using thick paint, graffiti-like content is placed over the composition resembling crayon drawings. By introducing these child-like shapes, colours, and symbols, he defaces the image and implicates new readings of his work. This content can be comical, nostalgic, queer or sometimes grotesque. Kirk’s work explores how different artistic techniques induce different responses from the viewer based on a traditional hierarchy of art. At the core of Kirk’s practice is a reminder to the viewer that what they are seeing is fabricated, that they are not the ones in control of what information is transmitted.

Kirk is interested in the way oil paint has the ability to both seduce and repulse the viewer. He is fascinated in this push and pull and the teetering of this invisible line. Kirk uses oil paint because of its tradition in Western art history. He likes to simultaneously elevate the portraits he creates and deface them using the same material. All of this is done while bringing a queer perspective to modern portraiture.