Jonathan Owen

Jonathan Owen is a British contemporary artist born in Liverpool in 1973. He trained in Fine Art at Leeds Metropolitan University and completed an MFA at the Edinburgh College of Art in 2000. Inspired by the act of transformation, Owen’s work often involves painstaking processes that reveal new meanings from existing materials. In his two-dimensional eraser drawings, he meticulously removes ink from reproduced photographs in books using an ordinary rubber to create ghostly, altered images. In three dimensions, he re-carves classical marble sculptures and antique objects, revealing unexpected forms and spaces. Through these reductive techniques, Owen challenges viewers to reconsider authorship, permanence, and the layered histories embedded in familiar imagery and objects.