Rowen Dinsmore (b. 1999) is an artist and a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours graduate from the University of Saskatchewan (2022). Using a variety of mediums, including painting and video, the artist explores the topic of self-portraiture as a means to investigate identity and the self. She uses these mediums to develop layers that abstract and complicate the portrait.
Influenced by social media and art history, Dinsmore studies what it means to be a woman in the modern era through an artistic lens, often approaching topics of spectatorship, the gaze, and the feminine form. Her work offers both a critique and an embrace of these aspects of the female experience in a post-internet world.
She approaches her mediums and turns them into colourful reflections of herself; each work being a conceptual or representational self-portrait. Her work is an accumulation of her experiences, perspectives, and fascinations with others experiences and perspectives that are then reflected through her self-portraits. Though her work is self-reflective, the intention is that viewers may see themselves and their experiences within each of the portraits and narratives.
My work is often inspired by photographed self-portraits and are created with the intention to be the preliminaries to every piece.
These images are influenced by social media and the male gaze - I then alter them to complicate this narrative. The viewer becomes aware of this imbalanced spectatorship. While my portraits gaze towards the viewer, at themselves, or at invented impressions of themselves, they also join the spectators and appear aloof, unaware of their audience. I am setting up an imbalance where continuous looking between the audience and the portraits is recognizably inapt.
Each portrait becomes something one doesn't wish to look away from, even though they might feel that they should. With the intention to reflect on the imposed objectification of the female form, I want my work to confront the spectator, critiquing this imbalance by exposing it and embracing it all at once.
If not inspired by a photograph, I am inspired by an experience.
a fleeting moment; a conversation; a beam of light; a gut feeling.
My work is simultaneously thoughtful and intuitive.
like Frida, I am my own muse.
I am the subject I know best,
the subject I want to know better.
My passion for storytelling through art led me to pursue work in content creation, social media management, curatorial and creative direction in addition to my studio practice.
