Dean Bowen

Born 1957, Maryborough, Australia 

Lives & Works – Melbourne (Cheltenham, Boonwurrung)

Dean Bowen is renowned for his charming, child-like aesthetic and unique thematic interplay between urbanity and rurality, humanity and animality. With a practice spanning over 40 years and encompassing painting, bronze sculpture and printmaking, Bowen has developed a distinctive and humorous symbolic language that filters through each work. His highly charismatic and whimsical renderings of animals, human characters and Australian environments celebrate the vicissitudes of life, evincing the simple pleasures of human habitation within the artificial and the natural world.

Bowen holds a PhD and an MA from Monash University, as well as a Diploma of Fine Art (Printmaking) from RMIT. He has exhibited widely in Australia and overseas, including Paris, London, Japan, Germany, Poland, Egypt, Switzerland, Spain, China and Slovenia. Bowen has received a number of significant sculpture commissions including Point Leo Estate 2017, Deakin University Burwood Campus 2014, Hamilton Gallery 2014 and the arts/ACT Government Gungalin Commission 2011. In 2023, he opened a major survey exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Takasaki-City, Japan. Bowen’s works are held in many major collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Australia, Australian War Memorial, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Artbank, University of Sydney, Monash University, Queensland University of Technology, University of Melbourne, National Library of Australia, Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery and Point Leo Estate.