Case Study - Brent J Rowley
The Client
Brent J Rowley is a painter and multimedia artist living and working in the Arkansas River Valley. His studio is in Russellville, his main gallery is in Little Rock, and his work has shown all over the country. He’s an Arkansas native but returned to the state more or less permanently in 2019 after spending his post-college graduation years teaching English to students in Georgia, Russia, Japan, and elsewhere.
The influence of his travels is evident in his work, most directly in his watercolor and landscapes from this period which include Japanese Koi fish, lush mountainside vistas, and other far-flung realities. The influence in his newer work remains less apparent, but still present, with abstraction and layered motifs referencing the spiritual practices, philosophies, and mythologies he encountered abroad. His work spans subjects and genres with a deep interest in art history and the Western literary cannon overlayed and fractured by post-modern multiplicity and concerns around the shifting meanings of art, bodies, and the physical landscape.
Rowley has always been an artist, but in the last few years he’s transitioned into making art full-time, rather than the fitting it in around traveling and teaching. His work is represented by Boswell-Mourout gallery in Little Rock, Arkansas, and his work has been shown extensively in online galleries and in exhibitions across the country, winning awards and attention. He’s led workshops and classes locally in Russellville and across the state of Arkansas.
The Problem
Transitioning to life as a full-time working artist, meant that Rowley had to begin to consider his art not just in terms of quality, but also as a business. For an artist like Rowley, whose work is visually appealing, technically precise, and intellectually rigorous, this means threading the needle between concerns both commercial and artistic.
He needed an online platform that would allow him to capture is in-real-life audience–people he met at art fairs and gallery exhibitions–that didn’t depend on him posting and updating daily. Additionally, he needed to be able to showcase is work for a variety of uses, including for fans, potential buyers, gallery owners, and judges and juries for awards, grants, and residency applications.
Most of all, he needed the work of building and maintaining the website to not be another thing on his already long to do list.
The Solution
Building a website to showcase Rowley’s artwork was simple. We maintained a design principle that was bold and upfront, but left plenty of room for the art to speak for itself. The design emphasizes blank space and bold, modern typography.
We replicated the gallery feel of each of his current series by giving each of his collections their own page and placing the images in a panoramic scroll when viewed on a desktop, maintaining the same visual path one would have looking at paintings hung on a wall. Each painting gets it’s own space and as much responsive room as possible.
From a development perspective, the high quality images neccessary to fully showcase the intricate work of Rowley’s paintings could have posed a problem for load times and performance when viewed on mobile devices. We were able to meet these needs and radically improve load times with conscientious design and development choices that maximized load times without sacrificing image quality.
Rowley’s business and body of work are growing and his website will continue to reflect that. We’ll be working with him to help him implement his upcoming newsletter, manage his event listings, and offer support for the digital services that will simplify the submission and management process of his art business.