Collars, car keys, poly bags – they’ve all made it into Frank Bowling’s gorgeously colourful paintings. We meet the Guyana-born painter who is finally receiving his dues
Put something down in Frank Bowling’s studio and it could easily end up embedded in one of his vast paintings. Bangles, cigarette lighters, even his wife’s car keys – all have suffered this fate. So I am on my guard when I drop by his workplace in south London. And indeed, one of the first things he shows me is his latest painting: an exuberant seven-metre work-in-progress in which yellow, red and gold ripple out from two hemispheres. It’s decorated with scraps of a dress belonging to his grandson’s girlfriend – although, to be fair, the dress was offered rather than swallowed up by one of his vats of paint, as the car keys were.
“She walked in with a dress she had made in Africa,” says the Guyana-born artist, “and she didn’t like it so we tore it up.” He points up at the work and says: “That black there across the middle was the petticoat, and the circles around it are made up of the dress itself.”
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