B. Rockford, IL, 1918
D. Redwood City, CA, 2001
Richard Bowman (b. Rockford, IL, 1918; d. 2001) was a pivotal figure in the art scene of Northern California, pioneering the use of fluorescent paint in pulsating abstractions inspired by transcendental visions of nature, surrealism, and sub-atomic physics. Bowman’s kinetic, glowing compositions contain forms reminiscent of celestial fluctuations, fireworks, and subatomic relationships.
Bowman attended the Art Institute of Chicago before completing his MFA at the University of Iowa in 1949. While teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago during this period, Bowman developed a close relationship with his student and abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, with whom he exhibited in 1947.
In the early 1950s, Bowman discovered daylight fluorescent alkyd paints, from the DayGlo brand, in an art supply store in Palo Alto. The resulting palette, which for the artist embodied sub-atomic life energy, would become central to his practice. Bowman explained that fluorescent enamel paint emitted “an actual, measurable energy from the canvas.” Rather than relating his paintings to the New York school and pure abstraction, Bowman saw his work in conversation with lineage of Impressionist painters who sought to capture the quality of natural light. Said Bowman in 1951, “My work is based on scientific fact. It is realism seen through the laboratory microscope and translated into artistic terms of color, movement and form.”
Bowman was fascinated by breakthroughs in space exploration and early discoveries in atomic physics beginning in the late 1940s. He collected scientific clippings, developing a personal archive of the earliest celestial imaging as well as the cloud-chamber photographs taken by physicists which captured the paths of subatomic particles. These informed the billowing, nebulous forms and kinetic pointillism in Bowman’s work. In 1950, Bowman described his paintings as a “dynamic flow of lines and colors, atomic and subatomic structures, trackings, cosmic rays and nuclear particles.” The artist’s conflation of astronomical and microcosmic phenomena reflects his understanding of a universal spirit and nature as an interconnected force.
In 1949, Bowman moved to San Francisco to teach at Stanford University. While living in the Bay Area, he exhibited work at the Rose Rabow Gallery. His circles included artists Gordon Onslow-Ford, Ruth Asawa, scientist Bern Porter, and the poet Kenneth Patchen. Bowman mounted solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1961 and 1970. In 1962, two of Bowman's paintings were included in the seminal exhibition 50 California Artists at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Bowman was also included in the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1953-1954. Bowman’s work is held in the collections of the Oakland Museum of California, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA; as well as the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, IL, among others.
