Jason Kowalski | Ghosts in the Landscape

By Elizabeth L. Delaney

Jason Kowalski’s paintings read like a travelogue, a visual history where present meets past, and the ghosts of yesterday are brought to life in line, light, texture and color. Kowalski engages the past to construct visual narratives of long-forgotten landmarks that have persisted into the present despite a changing physical and cultural landscape.

Kowalski’s vignettes are a celebration of American Scene Painting, testaments to the exploration of ever-expanding horizons, both internal and external. Kowalski makes it his mission to visually salvage the iconic and not-so-iconic signage and structures that are emblematic of the rural American Southwest and its once-heralded boomtown destinations. Treating obsolete landmarks as new discoveries, he works to unearth then preserve them in layers of paint and print.

In his artist statement, Kowalski writes: “To honor the stories of the past I paint places/objects as they exist in our world today. There is a unique beauty in the undone, the abandon and in the shadows of greatness that once was. My work is an archival portrait of the American story.”

Kowalski spent his early childhood in Florida and his formative years in Wisconsin. By the time he graduated from high school, he had decided on a change of scenery and soon found himself in California attending the Laguna College of Art + Design. It was during his college years that the young artist began taking road trips and became captivated by the long stretches of road and open spaces of the American Southwest. Though the LCAD curriculum largely focused on traditional figure painting, Kowalski found that the subject matter he most readily connected with was the landscape and the signs of human existence peppering the Route 66 corridor. Eventually, he would make these the subject of his senior exhibition. It was an unusual move for an artist coming out of a figure-based program, but it served him well. After graduating, he remained in Southern California and gained traction as a contemporary landscape painter. His first solo show at Terrence Rogers Fine Art sold out in its first week.

Kowalski continued making trips to the desert with his wife, also a painter and LCAD graduate, searching out relics of time and place. Initially charmed by the culture of road travel and the fabled Route 66, he was further attracted by the physical traces of the past he found: the Western-themed outposts, dated architecture and vintage signs. Likewise, he was awed by the majesty of the landscape—its expansive skies and towering clouds coming alive in that “golden hour” light exclusive to the geography. “There’s something about the Western sky that has always appealed to me,” he says. “The mass of big, billowing clouds and the wide-open spaces of the West. It’s incredibly grand.”

After several years, Kowalski and his wife moved to Colorado, where they currently live with their four children. Inspired by the Colorado scenery and its “undeniable beauty,” Kowalski also enjoys being centrally located among the various destinations where he seeks out dilapidated, patinated “remnants of dreams” found in disregarded areas of the rural Southwest. “I’m fascinated with the history, especially of these little Western towns,” says Kowalski. “The West represents struggle…stories of hope…moving Westward.” Kowalski aims to remember, if not revive, those stories.

These days, Kowalski enjoys making each trip a family adventure. He and his wife pack up all four kids and hit the road with every set of able eyes peeled for a fading sign, a rusty antique truck, a collapsing diner or any manner of workaday objects that serve as unofficial historical markers throughout the region. “It’s a unique opportunity…for them; it’s kind of special that they get to go see the country and have an appreciation for history and these forgotten, lonely places that we stumble across,” says Kowalski. In addition to exploring Colorado and California, the Kowalski family has traveled throughout Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada.

Indeed, Kowalski’s paintings serve as visual preservation and documentation of the objects characterizing the unwritten story of the Southwest. They depict places on roadsides and in out-of-the-way settlements, often pushed aside or completely subsumed by so-called progress. Although his visual constructions may nod toward nostalgia, at their essence, they are honest and raw, and, as the artist says, “speak to crumbling away history.” They are ideally composed yet realist in their content, bridging past with present as they reanimate and immortalize “ghosts of stories that used to be.”

Kowalski channels his classical training to develop detailed representational renderings and precise brushwork within compositions made dynamic by the push and pull of strong directional lines and robust shapes situated amid the plains and vistas of the surrounding landscape. He then passes the subject matter through a contemporary lens, adding graphic design elements that he collects from actual print media. From this distinct perspective, he paints weathered signs, gas stations, restaurants and vehicles as they are, not romanticizing, reconstructing or restoring them to their former glory but honoring their legacy and finding beauty in their decay.

Kowalski’s fascination with the power of graphic design was ingrained in him from the start. When he was a small child, his family ran a print shop where he could see the process of producing the ephemera he uses in his artwork. Additionally, his family would frequent antique stores—a tradition he carries on with his wife and kids today.

This interest in graphics and antiques has propelled Kowalski’s artistic vision throughout his career, manifesting in the artist’s use of vintage print media, including postcards, advertisements and handwritten letters. He incorporates these ephemera straight into the pigment, and in doing so, creates additional texture while using recognizable cultural elements to connect the larger work to the reality it depicts. The graphic elements are not always apparent at first glance. They require concentrated viewing of the subject matter, not unlike reading the fine print of an advertisement. Kowalski thinks of this feature of his work in terms of storytelling. He likes to “weave a narrative,” to begin a story for viewers and stoke their imaginations. “I want the viewer to finish the narrative and find meaning in it,” he says.

Kowalski’s creative process begins with the sketches and photographs he takes while traveling through the rural Southwest. He then returns to his studio to paint. He prefers wood panel as a support, which provides a solid surface to hold both the paint and printed items he layers into it. He works from a relatively minimal color palette, choosing to mix his own colors from a limited range of hues. Each finished painting typically has eight to 10 layers that he applies in as many sessions. Over the years, Kowalski has worked his way up to painting mostly large-scale pieces (up to 85 inches) that allow his subject matter to claim its larger-than-life presence both on the picture plane and in our collective history.

When he paints, Kowalski relies on his photo references only to form the foundation of each piece. For Kowalski, it’s not a “true painting” until he’s making marks and value judgments on his own, painting from instinct, and imbuing the composition with his own vision and voice. “I think that my classic art school training allows me to make these paintings,” he says. “I hope they don’t look like the photo reference is even involved. I hope that there’s a looseness and a freshness, and I think that the groundwork that was laid in my education in how to approach and how to see is really important.”

The result of Kowalski’s approach is a focused composition that echoes photographic reality in its foundations but reaches beyond that linear mirror to activate the space with rich, luminous strata of history working in concert with tangible media.

Kowalski sees himself as an artist continuously existing “in a state of becoming, of striving.” As his future unfolds, Kowalski plans to continue honing his painting technique and exploring the Southwest in pursuit of new, forgotten relics to paint. Reflecting on traveling to places unknown and unseen, he remarks, “It keeps the wind in my sails.”

Elizabeth L. Delaney is a freelance arts writer and editor.

contact informationjasonkowalski.com

representationLewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NMJ. Willott Gallery, Palm Desert, CASue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA

upcoming shows2025 Winter Group Exhibition, J. Willott Gallery.Solo Exhibition, LewAllen Galleries, September 5-October 11.

This story appeared in the April/May 2025 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Subscribe today to read every issue in its entirety.

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