Owen Munisamy was born in 1987 in Belgium to a Belgian mother and a British father. After having followed private art lessons, he studied fine art at the Saint Luc Art Institute in Liège. Benefiting from two nationalities, he decided to further his studies in Great Britain. He was accepted at Winchester School of Arts (Southampton University) where in 2011 he obtained a BA(Hons) in Fine Art. Back in Belgium, Owen signed up to the Armoury (gunsmith) and Engraving course at the Léon Mignon school, renowned for its tradition of craftsmanship, decoration and gun restoration. He received a degree in Fine Hand Engraving in 2013. Since 2011, he has participated in many competitions and exhibitions in Belgium, Great Britain, France, Italy & Canada. Owen developed a skill in illustration. He undertook some children's illustrations. Owen participated also in his singer-composer sister’s composition projects. In 2018, Owen Munisamy moved to Edmundston, New Brunswick, with his family where he participated in the artistic life of the province. In 2021, he had his first article in an art magazine called “Created Here” from Fredericton, NB and another, online called “Shoutout Miami” for the US. Since 2019, in New Brunswick, he has twice participated in the symposium at St. Leonard (Rendez-Vous des Artistes) and has exhibited in several exhibitions in the province notably at Edmundston(Art Centre), Florenceville (McCain Art gallery), Fredericton (Centre Communautaire de Ste. Anne), St John (Salon Irene G. Guérette) and the St. John Art Centre.In 2024, he moved to Lévis in Quebec. Owen Munisamy was a member of several art associations: AIB (Aquarel Instituut Belgïe/Belgium), AFB (Aquarellistes Francophones of Belgium), AAAPNB (Professional Acadian Art Association of NB) and the CSPW (Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolors).He is now a member of RAAV (Regroupement for Artists in Visuel Arts of Quebec).
Artistic approach
Owen Munisamy is born into a family of professional musicians, members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Liège in Belgium. Since then inspiration came about naturally. He is influenced by all the kinds of art that surrounded him but he was particularly influenced by the world of SCIENCE-FICTION. Wind instruments, especially the brass ones (his father is a French horn player) left a strong impression. He is subjugated by their sculptural shapes, size, their architecture and their complex mechanisms, Owen amplifies certain elements, breaksthem down and reinvents. He changes reality, he emancipates himself and in the following productions, the world becomes more and more fantastic, his structures are so much more complex that one would think of spaceships!
The transformed world of OWEN MUNISAMY is nourished by two major artistic currents: BIOMORPHISM and SURREALISM! The artist’s specific universe brings him spontaneously to Biomorphism inspired by nature with aprofusion of curves,sometimes exaggerated, organic forms, repeated motives creating movement, the details close to the vegetal(flowers, fruits, stems, leaves). With his way of freely decomposing reality in order to recreate the always surprising, unexpected and sometimes bizarre, Owen Munisamy reaches surrealism. He abandons strict rationality to leave free rein to the living, to poetry, to serendipity to the phantasmagorical giving birth to pictures both sensitive and delicate.
PICTURAL composition by hand or in our modern erausing digital means is employed to layout and sketch his ideas. Owen Munisamy has developed his mastery in two pictural technics: Oils and Watercolours
WATERCOLOURES is often considered to be easily manipulated for sketches, to map out ideas or to quickly record an inspiring moment, seen or felt. Owen Munisamy certainly uses this medium as such but, since meeting Marcel Lucas, a Belgian friend and remarkable water colourist, he makes of it an art apart. He knows that watercolour is an unforgiving technic which scarcely permitsone to revisit a first attempt. It lends itself to risk taking anddemands a gestural virtuosity to over come both an excessive consumption of paper and for the obtention of precise lines and surfaces in the creation of his works.
OIL is a medium which enables Owen Munisamy to realise both large and medium formats. He stretches colour onto undulating surfaces and as straight precise strokes and curves.To advance through the complexity of his subject, he obtains a more rapiddrying process by the balanced use of acrylics for the base layers and aspecial gel mix in the oil colour to obtain a glossy effect and vivid colours. The work is slow, methodical, but oh, how joyous!
Owen Munisamy’s compositions demonstrate the characteristics which define HIS STYLE. In his first creations he fills the canvas or the paper. The subject is in the fore-ground and is supported on a background of several coloured surfaces and some simple structures. More recently, notably in the watercolours, the artist developes his backgrounds: they are often more neutral, here the subject reposes on a contrasting animated surface encouraging a contrast, there the subject largely occupies the space leaving the background nearly empty. But, he always creates a centre of intense colour or surprisingly sombre on which the eye must alight. From there erupts the forms, the strokes, the structures with an infinity ofdetails. The ensemble often seems to explode as it opens out as a spiral, as bouquets...“Of what does it make me think? A musical village, an orchestral ensemble, a fantasy vessel? ”I would also like to go further than the musical forms, more and more abstract, that above their surreal composition the visitor should perceive a complex architecture,audacious, poetic such that it lends itself to a dream-state, voyaging through an adventure…
