Frank Bowling, The Possibility of Paint are Never-Ending at Tate Britain

For this summer exhibition at #Tate Britain (until 26th August), we are introduced with, as his very late but very first major retrospective: Frank Bowling: The Possibility of Paint are Never-Ending. It is a large scale exhibition divided into 9 rooms chronologically exploring the artist's painting experience.

Bowling was born in British Guyana in 1934. He left his home country at 20 to start a career in the arts in #London and enrolled in the Royal College of Art in 1959. He worked alongside renowned artists such as David #Hockney or R.B. #Kitaj who inspired some of his works you’ll see in the exhibition. Bowling is an artist mastering multiple styles in painting and in techniques such as pouring, stencil and printing always using bright colours.

After moving to New York in 1966 he started painting what he calls ‘map paintings’. In this exhibition they are mainly stencilled maps of South America and Africa applied by spraying or pouring. From this period, he began to experience pouring painting in reaction to the formalism movement that was going on at the time, and following Pollock's style by applying painting on the canvas on the floor. He was interested in accidental results rather than controlled ways of working, and gave title to those works given what happened during the day.

'I am very open to accidents, I know they will happen so I try to go along with them and see where they lead'

In the 1980s Bowling was mastering the technique and added other elements in his poured paintings to create a certain sky-like-cosmic atmosphere by adding pearlessence for example. Later he added other #media that gave texture to his painting such as gel, acrylic foam, beeswax, glitter, even oyster shells.

Frank Bowling is now 85 and still works in his studio in London and the last room offers us a gaze at his latest works. He started using #fabrics and still paints on the floor, using a lot of water which gives this #watercolour effect when he uses #acrylic paint.