Scarabesque

Painting, sculpture and other creative fine arts and craft pursuits are Grant Dowling’s first love, a consuming preoccupation and continuous strand of his life since the age of 15 when he started painting with the then fairly new medium of acrylics.

After a lifetime of developing ideas and techniques, the paintings on canvas (and occasionally paper and board) in acrylic and mixed media are one of the mainstays of Grant’s creative output.

Grant is a Brisbane (Australia) based artist who also creates sculptural works mainly from recycled materials. Like other similar artists, he describes this work as “assemblage” or, if in two dimensions, “collage”. He uses his own obsolete items, garden & household waste (not the stinky stuff), what he finds, scavenges or buys from second-hand shops, op shops or recycling outlets and stuff that people give him because they know what he does. Dumpster diving and scavenging the kerbside collections is de rigueur. These works can also incorporate Grants sculptural creations in clay and other materials.

The different strands are always crossing over. The painting has found its way into the collage and assemblage while the collage and assemblage is muscling its way into the acrylic painting. The currently inactive stained glass work is about to revived and incorporated into the sculpture.

Up to now Grant Dowling has not placed a priority on exhibiting his artwork. He has made steady sales of paintings, assemblages, drawings and stained glass panels into private collections in Brisbane, London, Austria and Sydney since the 1960s. He has participated in a number of charity art shows and was a successful contributor to the 2009 “Resonance” exhibition of art from recycled materials at “Reverse Emporium”.

Grant’s main income has been earned internationally as a journalist across all media; film and corporate video maker; documentary and television writer producer & director and writer/producer of live events. Grant has written, produced and directed more than 40 TV broadcast documentaries in his own right and has been involved as a writer and other roles in another 90 (estimated) documentary and documentary style productions, most of them for worldwide distribution. Well known productions include The Crocodile Hunter programs with Steve Irwin for whom Grant was the principal writer.

He has also worked as a freelance book and magazine illustrator, advertising & marketing copywriter & graphic artist, comic strip writer/illustrator and newspaper cartoonist in London (Includes: The House of Mammon (book) Gay News (magazine), Middlesex Advertiser and Gazette (Newspaper).

Publications
A number of stories in newspapers and magazines have featured Grant and his artwork.

R&B Home (design magazine 2008): acrylic paintings full colour pictorial & editorial
The Coffee Club Magazine (2008): acrylic paintings full colour pictorial & editorial
The Courier Mail: leadlight/stained glass art B&W photo and editorial
The Brisbane Telegraph: leadlight/stained glass art B&W photo and editorial
TV Week: leadlight/stained glass art B&W photo and editorial

Photography
Grant’s photographic output has been published in the editorial pages of The Courier Mail, Brisbane, The Sunday Mail, Brisbane, The Brisbane Telegraph, TV Week (National), TV Guide, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Women’s Weekly, The Melbourne Age, The Adelaide Advertiser, The Australian, The Gold Coast Bulletin and others.

Lecturing
Grant was invited to deliver lectures to fashion design students at the “London College of Fashion, The University of the Arts, London”. Grant also lectured in Documentary and Video Production at the Queensland School of Film and Television for several years.

Grant is married with a gorgeous wife and daughter (pictured with him in his profile).