Day Bowman is a graduate of Chelsea School of Art and London University whose painting lies on the axis of abstraction and figuration.
In 2012 she was commissioned to produce a series of giant posters for Weymouth Station, host town to the Olympic Sailing and Paralympic Sailing Events. Internationally her work has been selected to represent the UK at Nord Art Germany (2013) and her work was part of a four art museum tour in China with Contemporary British Painting (2018). Most recently, her work was awarded First Prize in the Anima Mundi Painting Prize Venice Biennale 2019 and for the Bath Arts Open Painting Prize U.K. 2019.
Her work is held in numerous public and private collections worldwide including: Hilton Hotel Group, British Dental Association, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Art Collection, Dorset County Hospital and Yantai Art Museum China.
Can you tell us about your journey into art?
I’m not sure I’ve ever not had a pencil or a brush in my hand. From a very early age I can remember just scribbling and doodling on sheets of paper, books and, in particular, one pink satin covered Baby Book where cherubs were printed in grey ink at the top of each page. And so page after page I copied these cherubs which became known as Day’s book. I must have been all of two years old at the time.
In 1980 I graduated from London University and Chelsea College of Art.
How has growing up in a seaside town influenced your work?
Growing up in a small, West Country, seaside town it is not surprising that much of my work has referenced the sea, the beach and littoral and, from an early age, was acutely aware of the life of the seasons with the tsunami of summer visitors followed by the closed-up, out-of-season, winter months.
On a more contemporary note, however, it feels as though the U.K. is preparing to close up and beat back visitors without the right credentials to its beaches: the 1950s boarding-house mantra of “no blacks, no Irish and no dogs” will now apply to all those who are not economically useful. Much like our childhood messages to the gods and castles in the sand, I fear this small island might well be erased from the global map.
How would you describe your style?
There’s no doubt that my work is gestural and the work of abstract expressionist artists such as Willem De Kooning, Cy Twombly, Roger Hilton and Peter Lanyon were a strong influence on my work when at college.
Where’s your studio and what’s it like?
I have a large converted cow byre in the depths of the north Dorset countryside where I do most of my work. I’m very lucky to have such a space; the only downside is that I miss the community of other artists working alongside.
What or who inspires your art?
In my current body of work it is the home town beach as I find that the large-scale canvases echo the marks, lines and shapes that we made in the wet, grey sand of my childhood: thus the canvas becomes the beach that acted as the large- scale canvas of my child-hood.
I think now that I have a language of my own I find I gain inspiration more from living artists who are just keeping on keeping on; Phyllida Barlow, for example, is an extraordinary woman and one who has only recently achieved recognition for her work which is wonderfully playful.
Can you explain the concept behind your Fortress and Footprint and Plashy Place series?
The Plashy Places Series started out as an exploration of place in which I address the summer days of my childhood where the beach becomes our playground and where, wading the water’s edge, the grey sands stretched for miles. Remembering that not all summer days are filled with sunshine the beach provided a canvas for mark-making, inscribing names, hop-scotch or drawing out the goal posts. A concrete paddling pool, the sea wall built high and the colourful windbreaks that double up as modesty screens all jostled for recognition. Other times, shivering in our swimsuits, we drank gritty tea out of plastic cups and watched the tide turn and wash our fortifications away.
And conversely, when the tide went out, my brother and I were fascinated by the simple lugworm spiral forms in the sand. The title of works “Plashy Place” comes from a line of poetry by W.B.Yeats from his poem: The Man who Dreamt of Fairyland. Bowman recalls W B Yeats’ The Man who Dreamed of Faeryland, who, careworn with the fears and concerns of adulthood, observes the humble lugworm rising to the surface, singing of higher places
and golden skies …
Along with scratched childhood messages to the gods, our childhood castles in the sand were built to keep out the marauding tidal waters; today I believe the Fortress and Foot Print images represent something more sinister referencing an incoming tide of bigotry and intolerance. Whilst these are not overtly political works I am finding these memories and reflections resonate with the global issues of today.
Is narrative a key element of your work?
It is and it isn’t. I guess the best way to describe my work is that is on the axis of figuration and abstraction; some days I find I am leaning more towards figurative mark-making and others it is well into the realms of abstraction!
Can you tell us about your exhibition held at Atelier Melusine in 2019?
Sally Annett owns and curates shows at Atelier Melusine which was once an épicerie/cordoniere with living space above built into the ruins of the old walls of the ruins of Chateau La Tremouille, in the small town of La Trimouille in Western France.
Sally had been aware of my exhibition Tearing Up the Rule Book at the Westminster Reference Library London in March 2019 and asked if I’d like to show the work in France. Never one to pass over an invitation to visit France I said yes and, as luck would have it, it coincided with a friend’s birthday party in the same part of France. What rural France lacks in terms of visitor numbers it certainly makes up for in energy and enthusiasm and one of my abiding memories is having to thank the mayor and his wife for attending the private view – all in my best school-girl French!
You were recently awarded the Winsor and Newton Product Prize for Storage Facility what was your inspiration for this piece?
Watercolours is, I think, something of a misnomer as my work, along with many other artists’ work, was executed in water-based paint. The thing I love about water based work is that it doesn’t allow for too much correction, it’s all about speed of idea and execution. Storage Facility 2 is one a series of works from the Road Trip Series where I set out to investigate how and why we travel the landscape: through cities and suburbs; retail parks and parking lots; edgelands and endless motorways.
The paintings represent snapshots of journeys across such landscapes, by train or car, bicycle and bus or ferry across a river; journeys that criss-cross the land and our daily lives which we absorb, acknowledge or ignore.
How is the current lockdown affecting your practise?
I am fortunate in having a studio just across the yard from our barn in Dorset so the daily rhythm of spending a morning in the studio hasn’t changed. What has changed is the ability to visit friends and family either locally or in London. And then there’s the bother of not being able to visit art shops and organising the buying materials online. I do like an art shop and have been known to spend hours in them. And finally, the whole world of museums, art galleries and connecting with friends in the business.
Like so many artists the lockdown has affected so many of my plans for 2020. In March I had a solo show Plashy Places at Carey Blyth Oxford that opened for one week and then had to close due the Covid-19. A week after the opening of the show I travelled to Pembrokeshire to take up a residency that was part of the First Prize for the Wales Contemporary 2019 only to find that I had to return home due to the lockdown.
What are you working on currently?
The Fortress and Foot Print Series are on-going although I have embarked on a suite, if I can call it that, of five very large canvases entitled Citadel. They continue to question and challenge our perception of place, identity and, most recently, isolation.