Selected reviews
“These really are optimistic works, profoundly jolly, something so much harder to achieve than profound melancholy. They are resolved and not resolved, and with their quantitively cut-off colour they give wings to a wall.”
Oswell Blakeston reviewing the solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in Arts Review on 18th January 1969
“At the Redfern Gallery, James Lowe has his first one-man show of paintings and drawings. He has had recognition in prizes, scholarships and inclusion in group shows of standing. … a forceful and individual personality emerges…”
Frederick Laws, The Times, 28th January 1969
“This is an optimistic gathering of some of the most promising young talents on the contemporary scene… James Lowe’s kaleidoscope-shaped canvases are professionally executed in terms of their visual logic and craftsmanship. Lowe, like some others, offers a consolidation of Josef Albers’ faith in the rationality of colour.”
Eddie Wolfram reviewing Seven Redfern Artists in Arts Review on 27th March 1971
“Poet, critic, dramatist at the various different stages – all the triangular pieces are here combining in motion. … The triangular motif is cleverly and actively captured by James Lowe in the cover painting used for this paperback. In Eliot’s boyhood in America there was an active children’s book character, drawn by Carolyn Wells, and named Triangular Tommy. James Lowe has caught and given life to the same motion and by that cover painting Eliot would, I think, have been amused.”
Phillippa Toomey reviewing the Fontana Modern Masters biography of T.S. Eliot in The Times on 17th April 1975
“Jim Lowe’s exciting colour gouache forms on watercolour board at the Festival Gallery… subjects related to a dynamic colour Pink Spit, Red Descent and Lemonade Gouache are paintings in which he wanted to combine many different rhythms, different-sized elements and various images. Finding him ready to hang his paintings I was struck by the refreshingly unintellectual approach to his work suggesting that his natural uninhibited inspiration comes through strongly.”
Rosalind Thuillier, Arts Review, November 1980
“Bold, bright and as geometrically taught as a dancer’s thigh, Jim Lowe’s paintings display an unashamed glorification of colour and an intense appreciation of shape and texture. Viewing his exhibition, appropriately named Dynamic Colour, one is struck by the artist’s immense range of scope and expression. While Lowe has chosen to display only 13 pieces, the volume, excitement and sheer vibrancy of his work give the impression of a much larger exhibition.
To single out individual works is never easy, particularly when the exhibition jigsaws so perfectly together to create a whole, but White Slice has to be the jewel in Dynamic Colour’s crown, closely followed by Cadmium Fall, Two Fold and Blue Slide. Each piece positively bursts with buoyancy thanks to vibrant colours, giant punctuation-mark structures and the most perfectly composed texture which often create a magical 3D effect.
For pure, unadulterated indulgence to brighten up a miserable winter’s day, treat yourself to an eyeful of Dynamic Colour.”
Tivyside Advertiser, 16th February 1995
“In the late 1960s, John Constable, art director at Fontana Books, needed a cover concept for a series of brief biographies about the men (and all but one were men) whose ideas were shaping the twentieth century. Fontana Modern Masters, as the series was called, was launched in 1970 [with Op Art cover designs by Oliver Bevan]. In 1974 Mike Dempsey took over as art director and… a new artist, James Lowe, was commissioned to produce the cover art.”
James Pardey, Eye magazine no.74, Winter 2009
“New from James Pardey… comes another online resource dedicated to the evolution of book cover design, The Art of Fontana Modern Masters. … [this] excellent new website takes the form of a binder stuffed with information on the design evolution of the Fontana Modern Masters series, which ran to 48 books in the mid-1970s to early 80s, and was edited by the critic Frank Kermode. The covers, writes Pardey, ‘featured geometric ‘paintings’ in lurid colours which made no reference to the subject within, but instead appealed directly to the reader. For they did not just catch the eye, they hijacked it, and as such they are now regarded as daring design classics’.”
Mark Sinclair, Creative Review, 13th January 2010
“These really are optimistic works, profoundly jolly, something so much harder to achieve than profound melancholy. They are resolved and not resolved, and with their quantitively cut-off colour they give wings to a wall.”
Oswell Blakeston reviewing the solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in Arts Review on 18th January 1969
“At the Redfern Gallery, James Lowe has his first one-man show of paintings and drawings. He has had recognition in prizes, scholarships and inclusion in group shows of standing. … a forceful and individual personality emerges…”
Frederick Laws, The Times, 28th January 1969
“This is an optimistic gathering of some of the most promising young talents on the contemporary scene… James Lowe’s kaleidoscope-shaped canvases are professionally executed in terms of their visual logic and craftsmanship. Lowe, like some others, offers a consolidation of Josef Albers’ faith in the rationality of colour.”
Eddie Wolfram reviewing Seven Redfern Artists in Arts Review on 27th March 1971
“Poet, critic, dramatist at the various different stages – all the triangular pieces are here combining in motion. … The triangular motif is cleverly and actively captured by James Lowe in the cover painting used for this paperback. In Eliot’s boyhood in America there was an active children’s book character, drawn by Carolyn Wells, and named Triangular Tommy. James Lowe has caught and given life to the same motion and by that cover painting Eliot would, I think, have been amused.”
Phillippa Toomey reviewing the Fontana Modern Masters biography of T.S. Eliot in The Times on 17th April 1975
“Jim Lowe’s exciting colour gouache forms on watercolour board at the Festival Gallery… subjects related to a dynamic colour Pink Spit, Red Descent and Lemonade Gouache are paintings in which he wanted to combine many different rhythms, different-sized elements and various images. Finding him ready to hang his paintings I was struck by the refreshingly unintellectual approach to his work suggesting that his natural uninhibited inspiration comes through strongly.”
Rosalind Thuillier, Arts Review, November 1980
“Bold, bright and as geometrically taught as a dancer’s thigh, Jim Lowe’s paintings display an unashamed glorification of colour and an intense appreciation of shape and texture. Viewing his exhibition, appropriately named Dynamic Colour, one is struck by the artist’s immense range of scope and expression. While Lowe has chosen to display only 13 pieces, the volume, excitement and sheer vibrancy of his work give the impression of a much larger exhibition.
To single out individual works is never easy, particularly when the exhibition jigsaws so perfectly together to create a whole, but White Slice has to be the jewel in Dynamic Colour’s crown, closely followed by Cadmium Fall, Two Fold and Blue Slide. Each piece positively bursts with buoyancy thanks to vibrant colours, giant punctuation-mark structures and the most perfectly composed texture which often create a magical 3D effect.
For pure, unadulterated indulgence to brighten up a miserable winter’s day, treat yourself to an eyeful of Dynamic Colour.”
Tivyside Advertiser, 16th February 1995
“In the late 1960s, John Constable, art director at Fontana Books, needed a cover concept for a series of brief biographies about the men (and all but one were men) whose ideas were shaping the twentieth century. Fontana Modern Masters, as the series was called, was launched in 1970 [with Op Art cover designs by Oliver Bevan]. In 1974 Mike Dempsey took over as art director and… a new artist, James Lowe, was commissioned to produce the cover art.”
James Pardey, Eye magazine no.74, Winter 2009
“New from James Pardey… comes another online resource dedicated to the evolution of book cover design, The Art of Fontana Modern Masters. … [this] excellent new website takes the form of a binder stuffed with information on the design evolution of the Fontana Modern Masters series, which ran to 48 books in the mid-1970s to early 80s, and was edited by the critic Frank Kermode. The covers, writes Pardey, ‘featured geometric ‘paintings’ in lurid colours which made no reference to the subject within, but instead appealed directly to the reader. For they did not just catch the eye, they hijacked it, and as such they are now regarded as daring design classics’.”
Mark Sinclair, Creative Review, 13th January 2010
