Artist Interview with Christian McGowan
By Brandon Frye
Choctaw Nation
Sherman, Texas - Choctaw artist Christian McGowan of Denison, Texas, paints and illustrates imaginative and bright expressions for the people who encounter her work. She graduated, having studied drawing and painting at the University of North Texas, and is currently making a business out of sharing her visual stories.
You might recognize McGowan’s art for her use of ink and watercolor, her caricatures, or the animals she tends to put into her paintings and drawings.
Her fondness for animals began at an early age. She was born in Spokane, Wash. and moved as often as her father’s position as a doctor required.
She did not stay in one place for long, “But there was always one constant, and that was animals,” McGowan said. “Animals are everywhere, books about them are everywhere.” So it was a natural step for those animals to make their way into her art.
It was later in life, around the age of 12, that she learned of her Choctaw heritage, according to McGowan. “I was told later on that my relatives were of Choctaw blood. I thought most of the animals that I had drawn could be tied into the Choctaw stories.”
An example might be a huge buffalo standing over a field of Indian paintbrushes, one of McGowan’s earlier paintings.
With her art, McGowan likes to take things from around her and insert a dose of her own imagination into them.
“I see the things around me, but with the mundane things, I feel like I need to push them, make them pop,” she said. “Imagination comes out, I have the freedom to do that.”
She recently drew inspiration from her grandmother’s cooking. “I found a cookbook that has a lot of good pictures, and I thought it would be really cool to illustrate that sort of thing myself,” she said. “My grandmother makes a lot of strawberry-based foods. So I painted those strawberries, and now she has the original painting on her wall. It shows how much of her work inspires me and my work.”
She says art is the thing she is best at, and she feels it is a calling. The urge to produce art comes quickly, leaving McGowan searching for the nearest pen. But she is also able to keep a steady stream of personal deadlines and goals. Either way, like with animals, art is a constant in McGowan’s life.
“I sometimes question myself, ask why I do this,” McGowan said. “I want my art to carry a message. If I am not working on something, I get anxious. I need to be working on something, drawing something, telling people stories.”
To those who enjoy her art, McGowan said once her art is out there, you can take it for what it is, make your own meaning. Or if you want to see her in it, know her through her art, that is fine as well.