**Driving Kifisias Avenue With The Sky On Fire** *2022 acrylic on canvas 67 x 96 in. (170 x 244 cm)*

STATEMENT

Born and raised in the Ozarks of southwest Missouri, I grew up on the outskirts of Springfield, surrounded by small family farms and overgrown fencerows that marked both boundary and passage. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties, when I left for the urban density of New York City, that I encountered a radically different sense of place—an experience that sharpened my awareness of displacement and introduced the sensation of existing within separate yet parallel environments at once.

Since 2007, my home-base has been divided between the American Midwest (Missouri) and the Petralona neighborhood of Athens, Greece. My work reflects this dual existence, exploring bilocation and the possibility of transcending distance through painting’s ability to exist simultaneously as a physical object in space and as a conduit for mental and emotional transport. It allows me to return to somewhere I have been, not as representation, but as a present experience

My work explores the experiential and psychological dimensions of place and place-making. I am interested in how sensory and cognitive elements, filtered through memory, form understandings of place that are fluid, subjective, and continually in process. Painting becomes a way of engaging place not as something fixed, but as something re-formed through recollection and experience.

In alignment with ideas from Phenomenology and Memory Studies, I think of painting as both object and parallel site of experience—“experience maps” that translate moments in space and time into layered compositions shaped by boundaries, lines, and accumulated histories. These works evoke the spatial, cultural, and socio-urban forces that form our sense of place.

A key influence in my practice is street art as inscribed memory embedded in the surfaces of place. Its layering and material accumulation parallels geologic stratification, where time is registered through accretion, erosion, and concealment. This informs my process, where surfaces are built through successive layers, interruptions, and revisions, allowing time to remain active within the work.

The Stratographia series (2009–2021) explores layered urban and environmental surfaces as records of time, where architecture, landscape, and surface act as interwoven traces of lived space.

The Diatopos series (2022–present) draws on memories of the eastern Mediterranean, layering paint to evoke natural and built structures alongside psychological and sensory impressions. Hovering between depiction and abstraction, these works remain open and unresolved, shifting between recognition and distance.

The Oneiro series (2024–present), a subset of Diatopos, asks: “Do I remember, or did I dream?” Here, place and memory blur, and location becomes indeterminate.

Across these bodies of work, painting becomes a way of returning—not to a literal place, but to an experience of being in place. The paintings exist as a “there” that is also here: layered, shifting, and continually reshaped through perception, feeling, and time.

Bio

Todd Lowery

b. 1964 in Springfield, MO

Lives and works in Springfield, Missouri, and Athens, Greece

STUDIES

School of Visual Arts (SVA) | Master of Fine Arts (MFA) | 1993 | New York, NY

Missouri State University | Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) | 1988 | Springfield, MO

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Release Festival Athens / 2025 / Plateia Nerou / Athens, Greece / Street Art Mural

D+VA Faculty Exhibition / 2025 | Pool Art Center Gallery| Drury University | Springfield, MO

Extraordinary Terrestrials | 2023 | Phoenix Athens Gallery | Athens, Greece

Suspended Disbelief | 2023 | Phoenix Athens Gallery | Athens, Greece

“12 x 12” | 2022 | Smythe-McKee | online group exhibition

Watercolor USA 2022 | 2022 | Springfield Art Museum | Springfield, MO

Polychromatic States: 3 American Artists in Greece | 2021 | Phoenix Athens Gallery | Athens, Greece

Watercolor USA 2021 | 2021 | Springfield Art Museum | Springfield, MO

Isolario Edit | 2019 | Artnaldas | Nicosia, Cyprus

Featuring: Jacqueline Warren, Tom Parker, Todd Lowery | 2019 | Hyde Gallery | Springfield, MO

YOU ARE HERE | 2018 | Is Not Gallery | Nicosia, Cyprus | SOLO EXHIBITION

YOU ARE HERE preview exhibition | 2018 | The Phoenix Leaders Club | Nicosia, Cyprus | SOLO EXHIBITION

Isolario | 2018 | Little Haarlem Art & Print Studio | Springfield, MO | SOLO EXHIBITION

New Works: Drury University Art Faculty exhibition | 2018 | Pool Art Center Gallery| Drury University | Springfield, MO

Artists in Athens - City of Crisis | 2017 | Michael Cacoyannis Foundation | Athens, Greece

Artists in Athens - City of Crisis | 2017 | Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung | Berlin, Germany

Into the Pyre + Athens for Rent | 2016 | Raum Für Drastische Maßnahmen | Berlin, Germany | SOLO EXHIBITION

Stratografia M | 2016 | McGill University | Montréal , Canada | SOLO EXHIBITION

Stratografia of Ellada | 2016 | Drury Center in Greece | Aegina, Greece | SOLO EXHIBITION

Searching for Athens | 2015 | The Hub Events Center | Athens, Greece | SOLO EXHIBITION

Stratografia O (oil paintings + photographs) | 2015 | Galleri S | Östersund, Sweden | SOLO EXHIBITION

Kärlek | 2015 | Medborgarhusets Light Hall | Sveg, Sweden

Galleri S Group Exhibition | 2015 | Galleri S | Östersund, Sweden

6” Squared | 2015 | Randy Higbee Gallery | Costa Mesa, CA

Solar Decathlon, Drury University competition house works of art | 2015 | 2015 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon Competition | Irvine, CA

Unconventional Wisdom | 2014 | Pool Art Center Gallery | Drury University | Springfield, MO

Modernism Week | 2014 | Christopher Kennedy | Palm Springs, CA

Forces of Nature | 2013-2014 | Pool Art Center Gallery | Drury University | Springfield, MO

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

Professor of Fine Arts | 2016-Present | Drury University | Springfield, MO

Associate Professor | 2007-2016 | Drury University | Springfield, MO

Assistant Professor | 2002-2007 | Drury University | Springfield, MO

Adjunct Instructor | 1994-2001 | Drury University | Springfield, MO

Adjunct Instructor | 1995-1999 | Missouri State University | Springfield, MO

ADMINISTRATIVE

Faculty Co-Chair | 2016-2019 | Drury University | Springfield, MO

Department Chair | 2012-2015 | Department of Art & Art History | Drury University | Springfield, MO

Pool Art Center Gallery Director | 2004-2005 | Department of Art & Art History | Drury University | Springfield, MO

HONORS & AWARDS

Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship | 2017 | Drury University | Springfield, MO

Tau Sigma Delta Honor Society Silver Medal | 2006 | Hammons School of Architecture | Drury University | Springfield, MO

Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching | 2004 | Drury University | Springfield, MO

Commencement Speaker | 2004 | Drury University | Springfield, MO

Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching Nominations | 2003 | 2006 | 2019 | Drury University | Springfield, MO