Richard Bowman: Radiant Abstractions opened February 2nd at The Landing gallery in Culver City (Los Angeles), curated by Patricia Watts. Watts has been working with artists estates in the Bay Area since 2014 and has published a monograph on Bowman (1918-2001), a pioneering artist who decided in the early 1940s, while on a trip to Mexico, that he wanted to paint the elemental relationship between the earth and the cosmos. His first series, called Rock and Sun, was painted in a style inspired by Surrealist painters who resided in Mexico at the time, including Gordon Onslow Ford. He continued this series until 1950 when he became enthralled with early scientific imagery being published, such as cloud chamber photography visualizing the passage of ionizing radiation. He then chose to combine abstract expressionism with scientific exploration. In 1973, Bowman published an article in the MIT peer-reviewed academic journal Leonardo, describing his twenty-three years of "Painting with fluorescent pigments of the Microcosm and Macrocosm." He continued painting these works through the 1990s, for at total of fifty years. Series titles included: Kinetograph, Macromicrocosmos, Kinetogenics, Environs, Dynamorph, and Synthesis. Radiant Abstractions will conclude on April 27, 2019.
Dynamorph 25, 1968, acrylic and fluorescent acrylic on canvas, 51x 64 inches, Richard Bowman Estate
