So, knowing almost nothing about artist Frank Bowling, I went to the large current SFMOMA exhibition of his 1966-1975 New York paintings*. These were the famous ‘Ab Ex” years in New York, and it appeared at first glance that expressive, exuberant style suited Bowling just fine. His particular spin seemed to be his extravagant use of spray paints directly out of their cans.

The color fields Bowling achieved with these paints are stunning and masterful. So at first I assumed Bowling was more or less randomly and freely enjoying the intensely vibrant almost day-glo colors of that 60’s era. But most of the paintings also have in them stencilled maps of South America and his mother’s fabric store in Guyana as well as other references to the land of Bowling’s birth and childhood. So I began to think perhaps the bright colors weren’t playful and arbitrary but were deeply familiar and meaningful to Bowling.

Then I encountered a small but very telling video Bowling and a photographer friend made during an evening ride around Georgetown, Guyana and the pieces began shifting into place for me. Indeed his colors are authentic and deep within him.

The Guyana flag:

Surely is referenced in this painting:

Here is a still of Guyana at sunset from Bowling’s video:

And here it is again in Bowling’s canvasses:

Throughout the show there are numerous canvasses whose colors harken back to the actual colors of life in Guyana. Bowlings’ colors.


There’s a soul at work here. Technically and intellectually an extremely powerful one. Bowling’s canvasses up close are a marvel: Intense, layered, complex, beautiful. Fluid and not the least bit labored. To my eye, Bowling’s work is head and shoulders above many of the now famous abstract artists working in New York at the time. He’s not just expressing himself deeply, brilliantly, with great aliveness and drama, Bowling is expanding the range of what paint can do.

Bowling has been knighted and is considered one of the greatest living British abstract painters. Why haven’t we seen more of him over here in the States over the years?

*https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/frank-bowling-the-new-york-years-1966-1975/