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Glen Onwin
Glen Onwin was born in Edinburgh, where he studied painting at the College of Art. Following a period teaching in secondary education he returned to the College and is now a Reader. Glen has followed an highly individual course as an artist. He became fascinated by salt marshes, not as the subject of conventional landscape painting, but rather as a phenomenon to study with a quasi-scientific approach. He is interested in the structures behind appearances - microscopic images, crystalline forms, and the slow changes of materials over time.
In the 1970's and 1980's he held a number of touring exhibitions of largely wall based works at diverse locations, including the Scottish Arts Council Gallery, Edinburgh; the Serpentine, London; the Arnolfini, Bristol; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; and the Third Eye, Glasgow.
'Revenges of Nature' at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, in 1988 saw a return to canvases, but the work continued to examine aspects of natural change. In these works he used a diverse range of media including plant material, chemicals, coal dust, metals and wax.
In 1992 he used the Square Chapel in Halifax, at that point derelict, for a site specific installation on two floors entitled 'As Above So Below'. This work was organised by the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust in Leeds.
More recently Glen participated in 'The Quality of Light' project organised in association with the Tate Gallery, St. Ives. His work 'Blood of the Pelican' at Geevor Mine explored the processes of extracting tin, relating this to it's symbolic aspects in a large installation in a redundant mine shed.
Glen Onwin is an Associate Member of the Royal Scottish Academy. He lives in Edinburgh and has published widely.
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© Chris Fremantle, 2006, 2007 unless otherwise indicated