Marie Hines Cowan

I am a figurative oil painter who marries mythology with colloquial culture. My work is narrative, life-sized, and representational, though unconstrained by realism. Pushing color further than the average eyes sees, my work is bold, colorful and painterly, but also graphic and illustrative. My paintings make references to art, writing and thoughts traditionally attributed to the genre around Greek mythology, but also to current culture. Having first met Greek mythological personae in literary form, now I visualize them on the street corners of our modern world and finds my paintings informed by their stories as I works in the studio. I have called my paintings are narratives, but perhaps conversations would be a better description.

Born in Brooklyn, New York Marie Hines Cowan apprenticed at the age of twelve in the studio of a Long Island fine artist. She spent four years studying art and drawing the figure at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, and then studied art history and Greek literature at New York University.

Marie exhibits consistantly in the USA and has also exhibited in Europe, in such spaces as the Monmouth Museum, NJ, GoggleWork, PA, NY, the United Negro College Fund Invitational in Manhattan, Macassar Gallery, Beligium and Rems, Germany. She recently exhibited with Parallax Art Fair at Chelsea Town Hall, London. In 2012 she had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Culture, and in 2014 a solo exhibition with the National Association of Women Artists. She has won prizes with the Portrait Society of America, the National Association of Women Artists, Manhattan Arts International and Monmouth Museum.

Marie’s paintings have been featured in NYU’s literary journal Icarus and the Huffington Post. Curator Margarita Aguilar, who worked with Hines Cowan on two exhibitions, wrote the essay, “Men and Women: Marie Hines, Portraits 2004”. Her work has also been discussed in articles by, Renee Phillips of Manhattan Arts International, (Marie Hines Cowan, The Reading Room) Alsion Iloi, (Transcending Ancient Architypes in the ‘Popteric Age”; The Paintings of Marie Hines Cowan) and Kim White ( When Modern Fables Mix with Art History, Scratching for Something). A forthcoming interview will be published in CreativPaper, an English journal in Spring 2018.

Hines Cowan has been on Artists Forum TV twice discussing her recent body of work. Marie has also participated in The Arts and Culture Round Table on WVOX Radio and was part of the Arts Panel at Yale’s 2014 Women in Leadership Conference.

Participating in arts organizations across the tri-state area Marie has been a past Exhibition Committee Chair as well as serving a term as President of the National Association of Women Artists, and is also a member of the Portrait Society of America.