Frank Owen took up residence in SoHo in the early 1970s after completing his studies at the University of California, Davis, and began to show his work at Leo Castelli’s gallery on the Upper East Side. Since that time, acrylic paint has been central to Owen’s practice. To create Cape, the artist made numerous “skins” by applying acrylics to sheets of high-density polyethylene plastic. Once the skins had set, the artist peeled them off the plastic and applied them to the surface of the canvas. Scraping and cutting into the slow-drying mass of paint, he revealed glimpses of the forms and patterns layered to create the work. Owen’s slowed-down, iterative process goes against the sense that the expressive qualities of gestural abstraction must be based on fleeting moments of inspiration.