A studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Alex Rowan makes paintings in a former rope factory in Greenpoint, where he has worked since 2009. He began as a sign painter, lettering shopfronts across Queens, and the handwriting never left the work. Cadmium red, saffron and a dull sage sit on a ground the color of unbleached linen, pulled down the canvas by gravity as much as by hand.
The paintings stay deliberately unresolved. Loops of black and graphite run across the surface like writing that never quite becomes legible, and the drips are left exactly where they landed. He works quickly and destroys most of it, finishing eight to twelve pieces a year.
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Greenpoint, Brooklyn · Since 2009
Studio visits by appointment
Material and method
Alex Rowan primes in warm off-white and lets it cure for weeks before touching it. Pigment goes on wet and heavy at the top of the canvas, then he tilts the stretcher and waits. Where the color pools he works into it with a brush handle, a rag, or the back of his hand.
The line comes last, drawn standing, in one pass, with no correcting. It is the only part of the process he cannot take back, which is the point.
Exhibitions, collections and current work
Alex Rowan has shown in New York, Chicago, Copenhagen and Mexico City, most recently in a two-person exhibition in Bushwick. His work is held in private collections across the United States and Europe, and in the permanent collection of the Valehouse Museum of Contemporary Painting in upstate New York.
A new body of work, begun in 2025, strips the palette back to red, ochre and green on cream, and lets the empty ground take up more than half the canvas. The paintings are larger than anything he has attempted before. He teaches one term a year, keeps no assistant, and answers his own email.