She attended Florida State University for her BFA and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia for graduate school. Her work is predominately figurative and seeks to portray the intimacy and vulnerability of personal experiences with an authentic voice. She would like the viewer to become lost in a moment through passages that are visible and, more importantly, those that are not.
“What you can't see still deeply affects what you can,” she wrote. “I know, as an artist, the struggle we go through to get that final image or product. The progression of getting there is often erased, hidden, or just becomes an afterthought. As the viewer, you see only the finished product in front of you, rarely the struggle to get there. That process of art-making to me seems to reflect the things we deal with everyday in life, a bit of a metaphor, so to speak.”
Yow doesn't create studies or preliminary paintings. “I jump right into everything and work it out as I go; there are a lot of crash and burn moments, but that's how I learn. I need to have freshness when I work, an unexpected mystery of sorts, and I feel I can only get that by just jumping in. The very ironic thing is I'm also a perfectionist, so it's a bit of a battle at times.”
Look for reports about more studio visits in the future.