BIO / Alice McGowan
I was born in postwar Japan to American parents and spent my formative years in Asia. Japanese was my first language. As a teenager, I studied Japanese calligraphy and traditional Nihonga painting in addition to other types of art. I eventually completed my academic education in the northeastern U.S.

I met my husband, who was born in County Sligo, Ireland when we both lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Together we operated a wholesale vegetable farm, and then a plant nursery in Montague, Massachusetts for several decades. From harvesting and grading thousands of peppers and tomatoes a day on the farm, cooking, and putting away the excess for winter, I had many opportunities to become familiar with the beauty inherent in fruit and vegetable forms.

When the nursery closed, I could open other doors; I was fortunate to encounter exceptional teachers at the right time. Since retiring to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, we have both developed gardens for our own enjoyment as well as for vegetables. This has allowed me to explore in paint many subjects that I have found compelling for a long time. My paintings are meditations upon the shadow and the light cast upon these subjects in a particular moment in time.