Richard Bowman, Kinetograph 88 ⏤ detail, 1964
Richard Bowman
b. 1918 in Rockford, IL, USA
d. 2001 in Redwood City, CA, USA
d. 2001 in Redwood City, CA, USA
Richard Bowman was part of a circle of Bay Area artists that included Gordon Onslow Ford, J.B. Blunk, Lee Mullican and Ruth Asawa; as with many of these artists, he was influenced by Surrealism, mythology, and indigenous art, but also by developments, in the 1950s and 60s, in astronomy, particle physics and scientific imaging.
Installation view, Richard Bowman: Radiant Abstractions, The Landing, Los Angeles, CA (USA), 2019
Bowman was amongst the first artists to experiment with newly produced fluorescent paints, which he used to make pulsing, nebulous abstractions that contain within them a sense of movement, evolution, even animism.
Ideas of energy – which, in California, often connected to spirituality or natural phenomena – were manifested in Bowman’s paintings as scientific fact: fluorescent paint, Bowman explained, emits “an actual, measurable energy from the canvas.” In this way, Bowman progressed in his work from the surreal to the real, from ancient concepts of spirituality to new scientific models of the subatomic and astronomical worlds.
Ideas of energy – which, in California, often connected to spirituality or natural phenomena – were manifested in Bowman’s paintings as scientific fact: fluorescent paint, Bowman explained, emits “an actual, measurable energy from the canvas.” In this way, Bowman progressed in his work from the surreal to the real, from ancient concepts of spirituality to new scientific models of the subatomic and astronomical worlds.
Installation view, Richard Bowman: Radiant Abstractions, The Landing, Los Angeles, CA (USA), 2019