Born in San Francisco in 1977, Rowan Wood earned a BA in Fine Art from UCLA in 2009. During his final year of study at UCLA he began two breakthrough bodies of work: Copy Paintings and Cage Paintings. They were introduced in Los Angeles during Wet Paint (2009), an exhibition that featured the work of ten young Los Angeles painters: they were subsequently included in Panorama Los Angeles (ARCO Madrid, curated by Kris Kuramitsu and Christopher Miles, 2010).
The boundaries of visual language and the varieties of experience that art provokes are central concerns running throughout Rowan Wood's work. In his series titled Copy, Wood investigates the use of simple mark-making in an attempt to communicate without relying on familiar or pre-conceived forms. His Cage series paintings are statements on the limitations of human thought and the role words play in human life. Wood explores the use of controlled and manipulated forms in an attempt to evoke different, new or undefined experiences.