John E. Dowell (b. 1941, Philadelphia) is an American artist celebrated for his work as a printmaker, painter, and photographer. A master of intaglio and lithography, Dowell emerged in the 1970s as part of a generation of Black artists who expanded the expressive possibilities of printmaking. His career bridges abstraction, music, and improvisation, fields that have profoundly shaped his visual language.

Dowell trained at the Tyler School of Art (Temple University), where he later became a professor and head of printmaking.  After he received his BA in 1963, he completed a two-month apprenticeship with Garo Antreasian, co-founder of the Tamarind Institute and its first master printer.  Immediately after, he went on to a fellowship at the Tamarind Institute in Los Angeles.  While perfecting his own technique, he printed for notables such as Josef Albers, Sam Francis, Nathan Oliveira, and Louise Nevelson, among others. Tamarind has been renowned for its fine art lithography since the 1960s, launching a new era in collaborative printmaking. Association with the institute is highly regarded among lithographers, and they strive to elevate the art form by treating it with reverence.  After completing his fellowship, Dowell continued his studies in printmaking at the University of Washington, Seattle, earning an MFA in 1966.

His works are represented in major museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Throughout his career, Dowell has drawn inspiration from jazz, particularly its improvisational rhythms, layered harmonies, and experimental structures. His prints often resemble scores for imaginary compositions: delicate marks, linear notations, and gestural passages that move across the page like sound made visible. Much like a jazz performance, his works strike a balance between structure and spontaneity, precision and freedom.

“Modern jazz provided the artist with inspiration for his abstract imagery, and with an aesthetic connection to his African American heritage. In drawings, prints, and paintings, Dowell developed abstract, graphic marks that served as visual corollaries to progression of sound through time. A skilled pianist, Dowell interpreted his abstractions in performance with other musicians. These explorations linking space and time led Dowell to investigate spiritual phenomena, including out-of-body experiences, and in the late 1980s, traditional African religions…He subsequently converted to the voodoo religion, and his artistic exploration within this religion links his art directly to an enduring spiritual dimension in African American art.”

Tomlinson, Glenn C. A Selection of Works by African American Artists in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; “Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin.” Winter 1995.