Description: Richard Bowman, Early Fluorescent Painting

Media: Mixed media on paperboard with oil and fluorescent spray

Title: 'Sol Spray'

Date: 1964

Measurements: 18.5″ x 14.5″ x 1″ overall including framing.

Condition: Good condition overall. Housed in the original frame. Frame has much wear. Artworks appears to be in good original condition.

Notes: This works is a quintessential work by the artist from the 1960s and glows with energy.

Provenance: From a Piedmont, CA collection.

About the artist: Richard Bowman (American 1918-2001) grew up in Northern Illinois, moving to Chicago in 1938 to attend the Chicago Art Institute. After earning his BFA in 1942 at the Chicago Art Institute, Bowman received the Edward L. Ryerson Traveling fellowship and traveled to Mexico where he met the British Surrealist painter Gordon Onslow Ford.  Bowman returned to the US and took a position teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1940s.  In 1949 Bowman earned his MFA from the University of Iowa.  At the University of Iowa Bowman studied with Mauricio Lasansky.  Bowman then moved to Winnipeg, Canada to head up an art program at the University of Manitoba.  In the late 1950s Bowman was invited by prior acquaintance Gordon Onslow Ford to move out to the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California.  Bowman and his wife Peggy accepted this invitation and moved to San Francisco soon after.  In the Bay Area Bowman continued to teach and paint, and was heavily involved with both the Bay Area beat movement and the San Francisco Bay Area abstract expressionist scene.  Here too Bowman rekindled his relationship with Gordon Onslow Ford.  With Ford and fellow artists Wolfgang Paalen and Lee Mullican Bowman studied aspects of surrealism and the art of the subconscious.  Bowman remained in the Bay Area until his death in 2001.Bowman’s art is characterized by an idiosyncratic style inspired by transcendentalism, surrealism, and a fascination with sub-atomic physics.  Bowman is thought to be the first fine artist to use fluorescent paint, which Bowman believed embodied sub-atomic life energy.