Rowan grew up in highland Perthshire with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder, which lead to sensory overload, communication issues with his parents and resulted in a lot of difficulties in his life, including social making, anxiety and severe depression. He also suffered cluster headaches from his teenage years and his parents separated when he was just going into secondary school, neglect from his parents followed this point, he and his big brother raised themselves and made sure their mum was up for work each day. As you can imagine this history, combined with the loss of his family in recent years and his own battle with a life threatening disease has been hard for him to remain balanced. His art was and is his solace, along with his spiritual, philosophical and psychological studies. He is now a qualified therapist and coach, runs his own meditation and Suppliment company (Aspiro Ltd) and has developed a unique photography style.
As an outsider artist he is completely self taught in all his photography skills and with the bulk of his training in nightclubs and events in the naughties, he worked with light in difficult environments. This experiance was a real key to his ability to control light through a lens as well as how to learn some form of social skills.
He loves light and making art that causes a shift in consciousness while we contemplate what we are looking at. you will see light from the wrong angles and random reflections in his work, this is all to show you that it is really a photograph you are looking at not a CGI image.
