Education

Current Status: Professor Emerita, Teaching Stream, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, University of Toronto Mississauga.

Current Research: Pulling Threads: Conversations about processes, practices, aging, and visibility by senior women artists. The project explores the experiences (challenges, liberations, perceptions, reflections, and practices) of older women artists in Canada, particularly visual artists, who continue to engage in making work.

Art and Drawing Research

My approach to research of “drawing as thinking through” explores the language of mark making and map making as a form of problem solving and communication. Integrating the concept of graphicacy, my research examines the use of drawing, diagramming, and/or mapping to “think though” a problem both individually and collaboratively. For several years I refrained from exhibitions as I developed my drawing research practice. I have included select publications that became an extension of my art practice and work.  I explored drawing as both methodology and data for phenomenological research within the academic setting.

Exhibitions: Solo (selected):

2008 Obscuring Our View, Toronto School of Art Gallery, Toronto.
2006 Re-patterning, Hamilton Artists Inc., Hamilton, Ont.
2002 ZOOM, White Water Gallery, North Bay, 
2002 ZOOM, Latcham Gallery, Stouffville, Ont.
2000 What a Rush, Sinclair Community College, Dayton, Ohio
1998 Water on the Brain / Early Technology for Girls, Hamilton Artists Inc., Hamilton, Ont.
1998 Water on the Brain / Early Technology for Girls, Redhead Gallery Showcase, Toronto, Ont.
1996 Complicated Artifacts, Ottawa School of Art Gallery, Ottawa, Ont.
1994 Aligning the Spirit, Dofasco Gallery, Dundas Valley School of Art, Dundas, Ont
1992 New Work, Lindsay Public Gallery, Lindsay, Ont.
1992 Collected Memories, Art Dialogue Gallery, Toronto, Ont.
1991 Toward a New Destination, The Gallery (now known as the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough, Scarborough, Ont.
1990 The Primal Boat Series, Art Dialogue Gallery, Toronto, Ont.

Exhibitions Group (selected):

2026 Visible Labour, Leslie Grove Gallery, Toronto
2012 Drawing Now – Source, Triangle Gallery, Toronto
2011 Drawing Now, Triangle Gallery, Toronto.
2011 Sketchbook Project, Brooklyn Art Library, Brooklyn, New York
2008 Drawing Now, Toronto School of Art Gallery, Toronto.
2003 Lucida, Hamilton Artists Inc., Hamilton, Ont. (4 person) 
2001 Saturate, Tracey Bowen & Matthew Varey, Grimsby Public Gallery, Grimsby, Ont.
2001 Acceleration & Decay, The Bruce Gallery, University of Edinboro, Edinboro, PA (3 person).
2000 Convergence: 10 Body Contexts, Burlington Art Centre, Burlington, Ont.
2000 Tracey Bowen & Eva Chris Goldberg for Contact 2000, Rebecca Gallery, Toronto.
1999 Press Zero, Artword Gallery, Toronto, Ont. (3 person)
1999 Decade of Days, Burlington Art Centre, Burlington, Ont.
1998 In Search of Meaning, (2 person) The Gallery, Scarborough Campus, University of Toronto. 
1997 Stuff in Search of Meaning, Hamilton Artists’ Inc., Hamilton, Ont. 
1995 Lunchbox Revisited, Hamilton Artists Inc., Hamilton, Ont.
1995 Defining the Site, (BAAWA collaboration), Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Ont.
1995 Hamilton Artists Inc. Members Exhibition, Hamilton, Ont.
1994 Sovereignty, MacDonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph, Ont. 
1992 Under One Roof, Artists for the City Collective, Cornwall Regional Gallery, Cornwall, Ont. 
1992 Under One Roof, Artists for the City Collective, Whitewater Gallery, North Bay, Ont.
1990 Housing: A Right. The Power Plant, Toronto, Ont.

Selected writings

Edited Books

Berg, T. and Bowen, T. (2026). Lines of Inquiry: Multidisciplinary Methodologies in Drawing and Education. Intellect Books: The University of Chicago Press (12 chapters). ISBN (Paperback)
An international collection that redefines drawing as a powerful tool for thinking, feeling, and connecting across disciplines, cultures, and experiences. Essays by researchers, scholars, and artists from nine countries, including teachers, architects, psychotherapists, museum educators, and curators, present diverse perspectives on the collaborative and interpretive power of drawing.

Bowen, T. and Caraway, B. R. (2021). Visual Futures: Exploring the Past, Present, and Divergent Possibilities of Visual Practice.  Chicago: Intellect, The University of Chicago Press (9 chapters). ISBN (Paperback) 9781789384468

Book Chapters

Bowen, T. (2021). Visualizing Gentrification: Resistance and reclamation through the writing on the walls. In, T. Bowen and B. R. Caraway (Eds.), Visual Futures: Exploring the Past, Present, and Divergent Possibilities of Visual Practice. Chicago: Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, pp. 53-71.

Bowen, T. (2012). Drawing on Art Practice: Rethinking Visual Processes and Pedagogies. In Aundreta Conner Farris and Frieda Pattenden (Eds.), Exploring Visual Literacy Inside, Outside, and through the Frame. Leiden: Brill, pp. 31-39

Articles (Drawing research)

Bowen, T. (2023). Drawing as thinking through: Students’ use of collaborative drawing to examine “problemical” situations. Higher Education Research and Development, (12), 1-19. 

Bowen, T. (2023). Drawing from experience: Visualizing the impact of COVID-19. Journal of Visual Literacy, 42(4), 246-268.

Bowen, T. and Evans, M.M. (2019). Shedding Light on “Knowledge”: Identifying and Analyzing Visual Metaphors in Drawings. Metaphor and Symbol, 34(4): 243-257. 

Bowen, T. and Evans, MM. (2018). What does knowledge look like? Interpreting diagrams as contemporary hieroglyphics. Visual Communications, 18(4): 475-505. 

Bowen, T. and Evans, M. M. (2015). What does Knowledge look like? Drawing as a means of knowledge representation and knowledge construction. Education for Information 31, 53-72. DOI 10.3233/EFI-150947

Bowen, T.  (2013) Graffiti as Spatializing Practice and Performance. Rhizomes; Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, Issue 25  

Bowen, T. (2009). Drawing within the Chiasm. In Fragmentation: If drawing and seeing are fragmentary, what guides selection, interpretation and (re) construction? A. Selby (Ed.) Tracey: Drawing and Visualisation Research, Loughborough University, Leicestershire.

Bowen, T. (2006). The cyborg subject position: Exploring a reconfigured sense of body and perception when making art in the cyborg realm. Canadian Review of Art Education.

Bowen, T. (2004). Making art in a digital/cyber culture: exploring the dialectic between the manual creator and the digital self. Digital Creativity. 14 (4), 219-228.

Selected talks and conference presentations

“Mark Making Experiences: Drawing as Data, Methodology, And Pedagogy.” Fourteenth International Conference on The Image, Nov. 15-16, 2023. San Jorge University Zaragoza, Spain.

“Drawing from experience:  Visualizing the impact of COVID 19”. International Visual Literacy Association conference, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla, Finland Aug. 11, 2022. 

“Drawing as thinking through: Examining students’ pictorial organization and use of icons when visualizing a problem through collaborative drawing”, International Communications Association (ICA) conference, Paris France May 29, 2022.

“Picture this: Examining Students’ professional decision-making through collaborative drawing.” Learner Conference (Virtual), July 8, 2021. Hosted by Jagiellonian University Krakow Poland.

“Visualizing Gentrification: Marginalized voices speak through the writing on the walls.” Leaving Traces, Living Politics ENSAB and University of Rennes 2, Rennes France Nov. 22-23, 2018. 

“What do the inner spaces of your body look like? A pilot project examining visitor engagement at the Ontario Science Centre”  International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA) National Louis University, Chicago. November 1-4, 2018.

“What does Knowledge look like? Identifying shared systems for visually communicating an abstract concept”.  8^th Global Conference on Visual Literacies. Lisbon Portugal, March 22-24, 2015.

“Visual Literacy or Literacy Agility? Exploring rearrangeable skill sets in the digital information age.” International Symposium on Visual Literacy, School of Informatics & Sciences, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan, Oct. 12-13, 2013.

“Disrupting the Lines Between Materiality and Virtuality: Exploring “Aura” as a Pedagogical Site for Personal Projections of Aesthetic Sensibilities.” An Interdisciplinary Conversation:  Mobility of the Line.  Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Design Education, University of Brighton, Brighton UK, Jan. 10-12, 2008. 

“Materiality and Immateriality of Art and Design in the Digital Age,” Big Talk 2, Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, April 27-28, 2006.