Roy Dowell’s interest in world cultures and the history of modern and contemporary art and design forms the basis of his quirky yet seemingly familiar paintings. His work taps into the universal need to create, decorate, or invent personal languages and is based on his extensive knowledge of color, pattern, folk motifs, and design elements. With multi-layered images that combine representational and abstract elements, Dowell’s artworks invite viewers to decipher and decode them.

Roy Dowell was born in 1951 in Bronxville, NY, and lives in Los Angeles, CA. He earned his 1975 MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA (1975) and his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA (1973).

Dowell has mounted solo exhibitions at The Landing in New York City, NY (2022); Miles McEnery Gallery in New York City, NY (2022, 2020); Bolsky Gallery at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, CA (2019); as-is gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2019); 1969 Gallery in New York City, NY (2017); Tif Sigfrids Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2016), and elsewhere.

His work has been featured in group exhibitions such as Abstracted Vocabularies at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in San Diego, CA (2021); FEEDBACK (curated by Helen Molesworth) at Jack Shainman Gallery: The School in Kinderhook, NY (2019); The American Academy Invitational Exhibition of Visual Art at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, NY (2018); Make/Work at Los Angeles Valley College in Van Nuys, CA (2018); Vision Valley at the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, CA (2018); and others.

His work is in the collections of LACMA, The HAMMER Museum, MOCA, SFMOMA, The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, The Berkeley Art Museum, and The Oakland Museum.