Brent Owens was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He's an artist whose work addresses the awkward relationship of humankind to the natural world, often through an irreverent approach to working wood that leans into the grotesque.

Both Appalachian folk craft and Southern Gothic literature inform Owens’ work, resulting in a sometimes garish, homespun and rough hewn style. Owens’ practice is centered around harnessing a clunky workmanship and grotesquerie in order to highlight the pathos and perversion of the sapien role in nature.