DAY BOWMAN
PAINTING
Day Bowman’s paintings exist in a state of play: blocks of colour collide with charcoal lines and scribbles: shifting, dissolving and creating a psychological terrain of movement.
For Bowman, growing up in a holiday destination, seaside town there was strong sense of change and flux; the light with the dark of the shifting seasons writ large. Although, the beach was the playground throughout the winter and the summer providing space for mark-making, inscribing names and strange messages to the gods, hop-scotch, drawing out goal posts or marking out our own particular spaces. There was an acceptance that these lines and shapes would be erased with the incoming tide; and with each return visit the shoreline offered up a virgin space on which we could work out their territories, again.
Throughout her work drawing and inscribing is as important as the brush marks and blocks of colour. The shapes and blocks of colour in her Fortress Series are not just echoing the small sandcastles patted out on the wet sands during the long, summer holidays but also reference the numerous Martello Towers, castles and ancient forts that are strategically placed along the coasts and shores of Britain. Again, referencing/endorsing the notion territory and border; the land and the sea offering the ultimate example of here and there.
As an island nation, she finds within the works a questioning on the notion of place, of identity and belonging.