Alana R. Bowles

Exploring the Marais des Cygne River valley with friends - then wandering home only to find a pair of orphaned goats fast asleep in the bathtub, was...simply a normal day when I was younger.

It’s in this way that I grew up an adventurer.



I like to believe that my obsession with discovering new places is entirely inherited. I was just a year old when my father strapped me to his back as our family trekked up Mount St. Helens in Washington.  Before I'd even turned four, my mother and sister would take me on back-road adventures around my first home in Oregon. Exploring West to the Pacific Ocean or North to the many waterfalls scattered throughout Southern Washington state.



When we moved to Kansas, we didn't travel as much anymore as a family but, as I got older, I would go out of my way to investigate the area around our new home. This is also the time that my sister steadily gained the insane need to bring home every animal she found. It escalated steadily as we got older from her somehow acquiring two little white mice, to us owning an entire farmyard of animals by the time I was thirteen.



The different creatures that would find their way to our home were always intriguing. I learned about them. I trained them. I went out of my way to study and photograph them. Over time, I learned how to recreate them in my sketchbooks as I saw them… their forms, movements and personalities. This obsession with precise representation led me to take watercolor, a medium known for its loose painterly quality, and tighten it up to a realistically illustrative style.



I’ve continued this mindset of scientific study and my fascination with new places and creatures is still reflected with every new painting. My subject matter has evolved greatly though; advancing from basic studies -to landscapes -to my current work in illustration. These compositions usually hint at surrealistic aspects dealing with the natural world and I often break the common picture plane to invite the viewer join the scene.

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In my work, I explore landscape, ecology and the interactions of people or creatures visiting an environment that is not (yet) their own.

- Alana Rose