Studying painting at the Royal College of Art from 1959—62, Frank Bowling embraced figuration. Influenced by artists like Francis Bacon, his early work was expressionist and gestural. Reflecting on this period, he recalls, “What was feeding my creative energy and what I was making pictures about was life … Distilling my drive to painting was the human dilemma and this business about suffering.” After graduating from the Royal College, he began to experiment with elements of Pop Art, discovering, as the critic and writer Mel Gooding notes, “that he could … present images as arbitrary and enigmatic, and exploit poetic implication and thematic allusion.” At the same time, beginning to incorporate personal content into his compositions via screen-printed imagery—including photographs of his mother’s general store in Guiana—Bowling constructed autobiographical and post-colonial narratives.
