Sound Vibrations / Canada Games Gallery / July 8 – September 2, 2022
Artist Statement
During my university studies, the professor suggested to us that we should seek inspiration from our homes, our family backgrounds, our surroundings.
Coming from a musical family it was thus quite normal that I should look to music, especially to the sculptural forms of wood and brass instruments and their intricate mechanisms.
Biomorphism, the sculptures of Henry Moore and Surrealism and Giorgio de Chirico for his metaphysical paintings, had a big influence on me. Likewise I have always been attracted to strip cartoons by the artists Enki Bilal (for his sombre atmospheres), Jean Giraud / Moebius (for his imagination and details) and Phillippe Druillet (for his dark backgrounds and very contrasting colours).
Aldo Pomodoro and Anish Kapoor also inspired me, the first by his spheres with a complexity of details reflecting another world, the second by his voids that pull the viewer towards the interior.
As de Chirico says: “Even that dreams are an inexplicable mystery but even more mysterious are the thoughts that converge to certain objects and aspects of life”.
My first years of painting were thus spent researching and gradually creating an enigmatic musical world with biomorphic forms of musical instruments with human elements, a universe of extremely rich and varied forms which are organic and alive.
I like to create an effective centre with a strong intensity where the eye stops to focus, a dark centre from which some elements escape into the light. It is a journey that incites the observer to begin a voyage of discovery.
In parallel with my oil paintings I use watercolours. I employed that technique to start with as a means of research for my oil paintings. Since conversations in my youth with Marcel Lucas, an old family friend and well-known Belgian watercolour artist, I learnt through his work that watercolours are a real art form in themselves.
My watercolours are a long search from complex structures to now more delicate and sensitive paintings.
My works are progressively becoming more architectural with fewer musical details.
I am always engaged in creative research, always going forward, always evolving ….
Biography
Owen Munisamy was born in 1987 in Liège, Belgium. Both parents were professional musicians in the Royal Liège Philharmonic Orchestra (OPRL).
Very early on he showed a gift for drawing. After following private lessons with a local artist he took up full time artistic studies (2002-2006) at the St.Luc Institute in Liège. It was at St.Luc that he discovered the biomorphic style.
Being British as well as Belgian, Owen Munisamy decided to further his studies in England where he did an orientation year at the Somerset College of Art and Technology at Taunton.
In 2007, Owen was admitted to De Montfort University, Leicester, to study Contour Fashion. Having succeeded his first undergraduate year, he quit this option and returned to his first passion, painting, and was admitted to Winchester School of Art (Southampton University) where he obtained his BA (Hons) in Fine Art in 2011.
Returning to Belgium, Owen enrolled at the Ecole Léon Mignon in Liège, renowned for its tradition of gun making, where he received the diploma in metal engraving in 2013.
Since 2011, he has participated in several competitions and exhibitions in Belgium, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada.
He has participated in several interesting illustration projects such as a children’s ABC book, a children’s song book and publicity for his sister Lauren Moon, a singer songwriter.
In May 2018 for family reasons, Owen’s future is now in Canada. He and his family settled in Edmundston, NB, where they are now well established.