Publications:

"Textured Lives", published by Smith College 2000.

Reviews/Articles:

Paul Elisha, WAMC

"All commendable art, in whatever form, falls into two major classes: the first is defined by a sense that everything depicted is in its rightful place and has been set there by the rules; the second begins where the first leaves off and above every other quality, disturbs the senses. Like Beethoven's, Olwen Dowling's works are roiled by powerful forces. Whatever the medium, her paintings disrupt one's sense of ease. Light and darkness clash on her canvasses and demand our attention. As with the Ireland they convey, we are sometimes inspired, at others amazed or gladdened but at no time are our emotions left unmoved. Hers are paintings that compel remembrance."

"Silver Lining for Olwen"
Irish Sunday Independent Newspaper. January 2006
(please click on link to see article)

"An Artist's Homage to Connemara" by Phoebe Mitchell
Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA. December 29, 2003

"The name Connemara, an area in County Galway on the western shore of Ireland, comes from a warrior tribe, sent there by ancient Gaelic kings to seize the land in their name. The region remains one of the finest wilderness areas in Europe today. North Chester artist Olwen O'Herlihy Dowling captures Connemara's rugged beauty in her watercolors and oil paintings. The 15 watercolors and five oil paintings on display suggest a landscape with little to soften it except the shadows of passing clouds and the muted colors that blossom on its hills. In Dowling's watercolor Connemara Colors, layers of brown, pink, yellow and green, which suggest the foliage in the foreground, bleed into each other like grasses blending colors on a windy slope. Dowling contrasts these earthy tones against the dark blue of distant hills in the distance and a light blue sky. Dowling strips the landscape to essentials in two watercolors - a diptych entitled ''Bol Vische'' - that each feature dark green hills bordering a blue strip of water. By boiling down the countryside to geometric shapes and solid blocks of color, Dowling lends it an austere monumentality. Other watercolors picture a patchwork of green and yellow-green fields set off against the blues of overlapping hills in the distance. Other pieces suggest the domestic side of Connemara: a watercolor of a wicker chair set against a pink wall covered in ivy or another one of three men, all in caps, looking out over the ocean and the faint outline of a distant sailboat. A larger oil painting pictures a small house on the barren shore of a lake, seemingly alight with the golden glow of a setting sun."

"The Secret Lives of Water Towers" by Christine Barber.
Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA. May 2000.

"Dowling started to paint her quirky and often humorous observations focusing on Greenwich Village. Table for Two, for example, illuminates the interior of a Broome Street restaurant, contrasting its cold exterior with the life just waiting to happen inside... and Corner Girls takes a cheeky look at two women, who may or may not be prostitutes, out for a stroll."

"Artist Profile" by Michael Donovan, Country Journal

"Review" 7/97, Country Journal, Huntington, Massachusetts

"Seasons" 7/98, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Amherst Bulletin, Massachusetts

"Seasons" June - July 1998, Artful Mind, Great Barrington, Massachusetts