In recent works, Frank Bowling plays with texture and color. Expressive and emotive, the artist draws on a myriad of different techniques to create these paintings’ gestural, layered compositions, including pouring, staining, collaging, and even scattering ammonia across the work’s surface to create mottled and veined effects. Dynamic and powerful, the canvases’ surfaces often feature accumulations of pigment and small objects that invite allusions to the natural word. At the same time, the collaged strips of canvas that frequently frame these compositions are cut with pinking shears, recalling the painter’s mother, a seamstress. Celebrating the unlimited potential of abstraction, Bowling’s recent works reveal the artist’s ongoing investigation into the nature and possibilities of painting.
