Edward Bowen in Studio
Below is text by Edward Bowen written for the Artists’ Talk, 26th February 2002:
There is a sense of
extreme awkwardness, I feel I have some difficulty in attempting to be concise
about what I’ve really been up to with this body of work for the last twelve
years, there were many reasons that precipitated the urges to start to work
big consistently again and to make it an integral part of my portfolio experience,
not least of which, that I love big works and had been making them since my
art college days in the UK.
I graduated at college
with big work, large colorful figurative canvasses, strong in a narrative developed
from two previous years visits at carnival in 1984 and 1985, when more than
anything I got to feel a sense of being home; I had become alien to my real
home as a resident in England for over ten years. Since a child of seven I was
in a boarding school, it was there that some deep memory of art was awakened
in the large studio, a converted barn away from the main buildings. My present
studio feels like that space and I remember taking to the art classes with a
certain amount of ease, recognizing that this was something good, something
I understood, and that I enjoyed its then basic and new processes.
My art school training
really began in secondary boarding school; it was there that the art rooms were
big and that the subject was legitimate and important, my art teacher for six
years introduced me to the rigors of drawing and looking at art; every Friday
there was a slide show in the small art room office and over six years I saw
thousands of images, by the time I got to art school the whole environment was
no surprise. I drew for the most part of my foundation and HnD, until the beginning
of the second year when I suddenly got a strong feeling about Trinidad, and
an urge to go back to simply see what was going on, to see my dad and my older
colonial family, the same ones who had sentenced me to exile as a child. I had
a vague memory of carnival and it was from there that I cooked up a story about
wanting to go home for two weeks and document the carnival, make some drawings
about it, take some photos and see where that led. The head of department thought
it was ok, so off home I came for the next two years at carnival.
I felt alien yet I was
home, stepping off the plane that night the air was musky, I had not been home
for nearly four years, as we approached the savannah, my friend bought us a
two carib and pulled out this fat joint and invited me to partake, which of
course, I refused politely! The noise at Carnival hit me like a brick wall,
I had not felt that since a Motorhead concert at Portsmouth Guildhall a few
years earlier, except this noise was continuous, upbeat and drenched in alcohol
with thousands of women walking around. The hard light, tropical and bouncing,
flashing and glittering off of every surface it could find and the whole landscape
with shades of perpetual green and all the other colors and tones in rich intensity.
I did study the carnival intensely taking hundreds of photos yet alas spending
a great deal of time in a stupor of booze and amazement; on both occasions returning
to England I was tanned, happy, and energized. In England, yet more drawing
and the dawning realization that I was not from there, and that it was time
to go back and see what I could do.
My graduation was officiated
by the English abstract painter, Patrick Heron, now Sir Patrick Heron, a designer
turned painter noted for his use of bright and vivid color, for many years his
high color sensibilities were not really taken seriously by his peers and the
English establishment. He loved the work and the exuberance of it, and gave
me a distinction for my efforts, after art school I came back here buoyed up,
confident and totally unaware of what I was going to find and encounter.
I could have stayed
and carried on, my work was shortlisted for the new young contemporaries show
at the Serpentine Gallery that summer of 1985, I was later informed that I made
the last cut but was edged out by an English artist also making big paintings.
I went to see the show and was honestly a little disappointed that I did not
make it into the exhibition; my tutor of painting was an Englishman who graduated
at the Slade in the 30’s, Gerald Marx, he was standing beside me and told
me not to take it on, just carry on.. I felt that my work was good enough but
understood in that conversation, the luck of the draw, and the politics of it
all. Many of the smaller London colleges were not represented by the final selection,
but at least I’d made the cut, so I took my distinction and came home for
good, leaving what was a whole life and the beginnings of a career, to hopefully
start something new.
I came back knowing
one thing from my previous visits, and that was the absolute imperative to get
a space to work in that was large enough to begin what would be an extended
residency in the true sense of the word, I was familiar, but nobody really knew
me or what I did, nor I they, except for superficial knowledge. I though then
that having a space would allow an even flow to be generated from the optimism
and sense of urgency that I had returned with, there was then an eagerness to
see what I could do, I felt like I was at the beginning of a road. The studio
was then the remains of a servant’s quarters overrun with some very large
cockroaches, swarms of mosquitoes, a snake or two, iguanas, birds and the accumulated
" stuff " of thirty years from the family household who inhabited
the main house, nestled under the eave of the roof, a fruit bees’ nest
about two basketball size, they never bit, they would just had a fit and occasionally
swarm, yet they never came in the studio for five years. Tucked in between two
old houses and surrounded by three large mango trees and a ravine, it felt right,
two weeks clean up, by October of 1985 I was installed.
In Trinidad, I worked
virtually without a break for two years straight, making hundreds of drawings
and having my first show at 1234 in 1986, in that show there were about five
large paintings, none of which sold, but he exhibition was well received. For
the first two or three years I acclimatized myself with the local scene as intently
as I possibly could, meeting nearly all the artists functioning here, taking
to some, not really taking to others. I felt as if there was a lot of showing
but not a lot on substance, a lot of manageable articulate stuff, but little
that rocked me to my core, or gave me cause for concern. I went back to the
UK a couple of times toying with the idea of returning permanently, saw a few
shows here and there, but feeling also that there was a challenge here in Trinidad
to be met, one of relevance and engagement, one that at that time I could not
quite define, yet was very compelling and quite real, though intangible. I was
more bored by England than nostalgic, as if life there was predictable in a
very organized kind of way and the whole idea of being an alien with foreign
papers did not appeal to me at all. I thought that at home I could simply become,
whatever that meant, and possibly explore an original personal identity that
came with the space itself.
My career here has been
fairly public, I have mingled as they say with the high and the low, all the
time conscious that I did not really have anything to say, except to do and
think, and then perhaps try to reason what I had made. It’s been a lot
of work, a lot of trial and error, many very interesting experiments and collaborations,
many many dialogues with endless cups of tea and cigarettes, many books to read
on a variety of subjects, most of them in hindsight subversive to the existing
conservative status quo. Many dreams expressed in secret to close friends and
colleagues about the state of things, the nature of art, and the links between
these two seemingly separate ideas, for much of the time I felt I was doing
some kind of research, never really getting a handle on things except when in
studio or very angry. Curiously enough in this odd little space here in St.
Ann’s, I have met ambassadors, world renowned artists, great thinkers and
intellectuals, all curious minds looking for a lack of pretension, willing to
endure the mosquitoes to see some art and have a chat about anything that came
to mind. Over the years interfacing with students of all ages, privately and
in the schools, and through them understanding in my own way where the system
of education as a whole was failing and also succeeding. I became involved and
was asked to participate at the highest levels here, yet there is no antidote
for when you are really stuck on a painting or in a sustained concentration
with a drawing over several weeks, possibly months, and the work won’t
give up its secrets until you sweat, and or get mad with it, or have a depression
of sorts, that’s a private thing only a few see, but most artists know.
I have tried to stay away from theory, yet some of my closest collaborators
over the years here are steeped in theoretical analysis; many a time I have
felt truly ignorant in front of some of these minds with their great ability
to retain knowledge and facts, I always felt that in my work I was trying to
get rid of what I knew, keeping it all for myself seemed to block my mind. I
seem to work best when my mind was empty of what I thought I could do with a
particular piece, as soon as I knew, the mental picture would immediately change
to another projection of possibility, an apparently simple drawing could take
minutes or months.
Over the years I have
worked on several different projects in studio simultaneously, all the while
also writing about the work and keeping journals spread over many thousands
of sheets of paper, most of which have ended up in the garbage or burnt in ritualistic
fires, many works lost, because they disintegrated or were simply left to decay
slowly. I have treated this space as would be a personal laboratory where experiments
are made and assessed, the environment outside at large, natural and unnatural,
was and is the investigation and also the place of enquiry and contribution.
I have tried marketing
myself but got bored with it, it seemed like really hard work to be selling
yourself all the time to the highest possible bidder, and I could never keep
up the effort for any length of time with any degree of seriousness, so a few
years ago I just quit that whole notion of marketing and decided to get keep
myself quiet and simply to get on with it. In the late eighties, a few others
and myself got a bad name because we got fed up with endless meaningless rhetoric
and started cussin’ the establishment; petty jealousies abounded and still
do. I have been on a search for identity and self, and found out very little
except where I have failed and in some cases succeeded, it has been a strange
and wonderful experience making these works trying to see other alternatives
and keep it secret, whilst at the same time I was trying to understand my new
contextual references and move harmoniously in my environment.
The sensation I have now with this body of work on exhibition is one of release,
as if I am letting go of thoughts, statements and actions that have inhabited
or been harboured in my studio since 1989.
I remember the original
feelings of discontent and disaffectation after having been here for a few years,
having met the local guardians of taste and culture, coming home to my studio
with a bad taste in my mouth and jumbies crawling on my back, seeking inspiration
and guidance and coming away with negativity disguised as politeness. I remember
the sensation of feeling that painting here was so misunderstood and without
purpose, that painters with few exceptions were pandering and gallerying, posing
with abstract and foolish notions of craft, good form, and patronage, all wrapped
neatly at social gatherings called openings. I remember feeling that the majority
of painters had all but sold out to a bulletproof posse of would be supporters
of the arts, who would meet regularly at openings to mamaguy artists and each
other in an endless rounds of one upmanship, as my good friend Francisco Cabral
put it, "pure glass jingling"!
I remember feeling pissed off looking at my own work and the work of other contemporaries
who were like minded, images and articulations of form full of twists and questions,
searching for new formal equations in a thankless landscape of empty promises
and often vile intent.
I remember the endless
parade of expat well wishers and occasional buyers who would invite you to cocktail
parties, and how for brief periods of time these people would assume an almost
god like status with reference to our attempts to get a break outside, only
a few were genuine. I remember the acute and ever present pervasive sense of
disappointment when the media would fail to mention or acknowledge the efforts
of younger contemporary artists, I remember John Babb telling me " Art
is not news!" I remember wanting to hit him.
The opportunity to emigrate
back to the relative safety of the northern metropolis was always there, to
escape and re-enter the hallowed spaces of universities and organized cultures,
to go far from this space and never look back; but the unanswered premise was
what would happen if I decided to stay and engage, what would happen if I decided
to remain put, trusting my own limited securities and seeing if it was feasible
to retain a core of consistency and find new ways to sustain intellectual curiosity
and good humour, what would happen to me if I stayed? These were questions that
were not lost on others at the time and were often the meat and mettle of many
a serious discussion amongst younger and some older contemporaries.
These questions and annoyances aggravated me for some time, I remember complaining
bitterly to colleagues about how there was no joy on painting here, only what
seemed to be the facile indulgences in the endless proliferations of a chocolate
box aesthetic and clichéd historical narratives, all neatly packaged
and framed up with appropriate pricing intended to grace the walls of the local
bourgeoisie. I remember looking at carnival and feeling alien and removed from
its noisy, empty gyrations and attempts at cultural specialization and transcendence,
I remember feeling that perhaps there was no transcendence to be had except
in drunkenness and escapism.
All the time discussions
with peers and contemporaries, and the first meetings with hundreds of eager,
hopeful and talented Trinidadian students who came to the studio to be shocked
in the search for their own answers.
I remember the deaths
of father and uncle, great Trinidadian men, patriarchs, workers and men of good
humour, who had contributed to the health and welfare of the landscape of peoples
here, I remember the great feelings of loss at the departure of their limitless
common sense.
Staying here meant that
the search for personal meaning and order was truly to become the only real
reason for being here, the challenge presented itself to find antidotes to the
endless clichés of sun, sand, sea, sex, stupidity and brutality, staying
meant engaging yet retaining the right to remain aloof, reserving the spaces
to observe without comment, staying meant employing the will to develop new
skills and attitudes that would become shields or psychic armour plating, staying
would eventually mean becoming extremely impolite and cussed as need and occasion
would arise.
Instead of leaving I
looked intensely at my situation and decided to do exactly the opposite of what
market and environmental forces were dictating, instead of making the digestible
small stuff, I thought that the antidote for me would be to engage an effort
that had no logical premise given the then present set of limitations. To begin
to paint and draw on a very large scale was my way of answering all the contradictions
I was facing, it was and became my way of removing my work ethic from the usual
and then present and very predictable discourse, the effort literally afforded
me the space to immerse myself in a confrontation with my own precepts of order,
skill and relevance, in 1989 the start was made simply by stretching up some
large canvasses and getting on with it.
The start of these works
in the late eighties also coincided with the beginnings of my dissatisfactions
with my own family structures and the attempts by its new rulers of business
to mask and hide their own selfish and greedy intentions, a dissatisfaction
that gradually manifest itself as outright opposition, boldfaced displays of
discontent and confrontation and the beginnings of my questions that took many
years to answer. The stuff of this growing argument was food for many a gossip
monger who would occasionally meet me imploring me to find some safe and amicable
way to resolve things and keep the family together, lukewarm sentiments at best,
many could not understand the feelings of outrage coupled with spatial manipulations
evil in intent, that were gnawing away at my consciousness. At first it was
just a strong feeling that something was " rotten ", but I could not
put my finger on its source, greed hiding behind the illusions of gentility
carefully crafted and layered by the mamaguy and politenesses of blood kinship,
in reality it was plain old thievery, stink lies and treachery.
Somewhere in the working processes as if in the hidden mind spaces beyond words,
my feelings began to emerge in the works as they were evolving, going to paint
I was always conscious of a sensation of distillation, a kind of subliminal
rumbling in my mind that is rather like nervousness or a quiet personal sense
of anxiety, a sense of not really knowing anything about what I was about to
do, yet a faith in myself that the actions to follow would bring me one step
closer in each piece to a kind of resolution of some of these ideas or feelings.
Many times the day would not go so good, events in the environment would take
precedent or my energies would not coincide with my effort, it is easy at those
times to think that you’re doing shit and even easier to lose patience,
it was oftentimes simply prudent to let the day pass or simply to allow time
to observe the work as it was. I never went to the studio with any thing planned,
the whole studio was and is a space already set up for me to enter and engage,
akin to a gateway or portal through which I entered realms of color, mark making
and intuitive intent. I like to work mostly in silence, noise is a hindrance
to this activity of pulling inspiration through the mind’s eye and transforming
those energies as gestures. For much of the time that it took to make these
works, I was never quite sure of what exactly I was painting about, the process
is a road or a path through abstraction, a consciousness always of the process
and what it was telling me, what my gestures and energies were telling me, forms
would become configured, become irrelevant, be destroyed and reconfigured, hence
most of the surfaces have this real sensation of being layered.
I did not want to plan
the works, only strive at continuity, my life as it was becoming was full of
its own dramas of decay, hope, joys, solitude, community, despair and pain,
as well as a very conscious attitude of my ability to re-order this collective
volatitlity in the spaces I used and inhabited. The studio was and is the safe
zone where I could go every day as if full of compressed files in my mind, my
brain the computer, the canvas spaces the windows for investigations and navigations
into the processes of making new meanings; each time I went to work a deliberate
intent to surprise and surpass my own comfortable expectations, a mania of searching
that can literally suck the virtue from you yet simultaneously energize. Each
painting without exception took several weeks to execute, in some cases months,
often involving several sessions where the sole activity was simply to look
at the canvasses contemplating perhaps many thousands of gestures that may be
employed as a next step. The size of the works demanded a stringent attitude
with the use of material, a new technique with the paint had to be developed,
to thin down and work with multiple washes punctuated with opaque gestural lines
or fields to constantly build and alter the nature of the evolving images, or
else the cost of making these works would have become prohibitive. In the earlier
pieces from the late eighties and early nineties the layering is not as intensive,
however in the later and more recent works this technique is fully exploited,
the surfaces are now like old polished leather. A lot of contemplation involved
being up very close to the canvas, oftentimes touching and running my fingertips
over parts of the painted surface, as if feeling for answers to its successful
resolve, sometimes I would spend hours examining a few square inches as if committing
to memory and trying to learn from what I had done.
The whole process is
like a continuous abstract drawing using color, a happening and interactive
process over considerable time, trusting my own instincts, thinking, memory
and my knowledge of looking at art. I have seen since a child many thousands
and thousands of works of art from student efforts to works of the great occidental
masters, I have stood in front of fall of these with a kind of awe, aware that
each represents some aspect of a particular creative " spirit " that
chooses this manifestation, we are its actors and audiences engaged in this
expression.
I have become aware
of an impression or feelings of a dimensional conversation of the mind during
the process, as if pulling information, inspiration from the immediate physicality
of my life, but also directly from subconscious configurations of the mind and
memory, somewhere in this dual approach is the element of that surprise of my
own history and all that I have seen.
Each painting is an
attempt to arrive at a new mental platform, as if each is a lesson, an engagement
in gathering, and processing knowledge, my knowledge in a particular way, in
a real sense all is editing and reorganization of impulses, a process of seeing
oneself in the activity of the work. Each piece strives to push boundaries of
personal understanding, to push technique and in many ways sacrificing a little
more each time to get at some kind of new truth, some kind of new state, some
kind of new understanding, I am aware of the density of each surface and these
interfaces of intent and gesture.
I have become conscious of paintings as devices that can pull or reflect light,
the skill of the painter being to concentrate the process and refine this inherent
effect of the work. For all the manifestations of modernism, a basic premise
in all art production and criticism is this dependence on seeing alternatively
or with (a) broader spectrum(s) of appreciation. The idea of shedding light
on subjects, objects, forms and ideas is both physical and psychologically bound
up in the process of art making and appreciation, the process is proactive in
the doing and the reflecting. I am aware of being part of a tradition that is
rooted in this spirit of co-ordinating and transforming information via codes,
events, symbol making and illusion making.
To me, all art operates in this hyper realized human state of expectancy, as
if by secret method, author or viewer will be forever altered by the engagement
of process to become or realize a greater aspect of the personal self, skill
or awareness, ritualistic is a poor definition of what I think is really a very
sophisticated process of expectancy and transference.
Over the years a few
collectors and friends saw the works in progress, occasionally one would be
let out specifically to partake in a show here or abroad, on such occasions
the feedback was generally positive, audiences here of many persuasions seemed
generally pleased to encounter some " thing " a little larger than
normal, however up until recently here at CCA7, there was nowhere that could
at best accommodate even a small number of these works.
Within the last two
years the working hours in studio have gradually increased, as I was able to
get back into the art making in a more concentrated fashion. For a few years
I took some time out in the challenge to my own family’s reorganization
of its collective business interests, an all-consuming activity that was frequently
stressful, occasionally life threatening, emotionally charged and extremely
complicated. That work involved the deconstruction of an entire framework of
wills, precedents, trusts, habits and general business activity that had been
in operation for over a hundred years, there was, needless to say inbuilt resistance
to this massive shock and apparently sudden change. In these matters I was the
agent of change, the intention was to bring to an end this particular manifestation
of a colonial principle embedded in this unit, one which had for all accounts
and purposes degenerated into a power play and the manipulation of siblings’
lives, property, and livelihoods. I opposed the structure, cussed it, threw
stones at it, manoeuvered in and around it for ten years and more, becoming
expert in the business of land, its uses, potentials, and studied it in its
broader aspects as elemental in the historical processes of this and all territories,
land and history are inseparable. There is an obvious link between this work
and the work in the studio, my work as an artist has been critically informed
by this study. My studio is situated on a piece of family property, at the center
space amongst warring factions, my family became my enemy for a time, I was
given eviction notice and the studio walled in on the north and south sides.
This confinement was
compression also of attitudes being manifest by others who felt threatened by
what I had said and for who I chose to be, I was not towing the line, not conforming.
Inside the studio, the program continued frequently halted by psychic and physical
stresses, the activity of drawing became therapy and release valve or methodology
to describe sometimes very complex emotional states.
In 1989 I met a man
of yoga, a teacher, friend, confidant and guide, an older gentleman of enormous
experience in matters of the mind and life, he taught and teaches a yoga of
balance. By 1993 my dissatisfaction with my environment caused me to turn to
him asking for more powerful prayers than the doctrines and dogmas of my colonial
heritage, I told him that the blind allegiances of Catholicism left me feeling
that I was worshipping idols, as if I was aping conventions that came with my
birth, I told him I was looking for something to read that could inspire me,
he handed me a copy of the Gita. I have been reading and studying this text
since that time, trying to absorb some of its principles of thought and action,
some of its principles of meditation, trying to assimilate its profound lessons,
he taught me to learn yoga, I encouraged him to paint. Yoga is science as opposed
to religious dogma, the text became a method of seeing and reflecting on the
very physical world as well as the interior spaces of one’s own consciousness,
the text examines human behaviour as well as proposing methods for conquering
one’s baser instincts, it is a text about personal power.
Yoga became mental armour,
the headstand rushed blood into the cerebral cortex feeding the matricies of
thought, the study calmed the mind and helped in the understanding of what I
was seeing and experiencing. Yoga became counter lessons to the corruptions
of my own personality and helped me to develop alternative working perspectives
and attitudes aside from the norms I was otherwise engaged in.
There has always been
an effort to remain connected to important contemporary criticism and thought,
artists and others who have been willing to stand out from the herd mentality
and express sometimes anger at the world’s constructions, people who have
been willing to be consciously conspicuous and outrightly frank concerning their
deepest opinions. I feel that for many in the contemporary dialogue that the
effort has been a conscious and deliberate shifting of attitudes employed to
deliberately alter environmental perceptions and states, whilst attempting to
be apolitical, a political position of internal " otherness " has
been a collective result, and the slow agonizing death of doctor politics.
There are many many
more feelings to express, many more personal opinions that have arisen out of
the concentration and meditation, too many to elucidate at this time. The work
has taken me places as well as stirring up some strong opinions in others; in
some ways I feel I have succeeded and been successful simply by refusing to
be drawn into areas of discussion where I feel there is no real answer, my answers
lie here in the process, distillations and the searching to find new points
or plateaus of understanding.
The contemporary position
with regard to artists is still vilified and woefully misunderstood, many visitors
to this and other previous exhibitions have been encouraged to stay away by
the politicking of ignorant forces that seek to protect their own ratios and
plateaus of understanding, this is unfortunately part of the ignorance that
artists have to deal with. In my own way, my work has been affected by this
politicking and in no small way part of my " anger " is a response
to this kind of ignorance, a response to small minds who would have us all bend
and bow to stupidities of all kinds yet carefully omitting to pay attention
to the issues reflected in contemporary work as a whole. On that note, I will
say that we as participants and audience here have a tremendous amount of "
work " to do in this effort to balance our environment.
Edward Bowen
‘the lessons
on colonialism’
by Edward Bowen at CCA7
‘the lessons in colonialism’ is the upcoming exhibition of paintings and drawings by contemporary artist, Edward Bowen, which opens Friday 1 February 2002 at CCA7, Fernandes Industrial Centre, Laventille. Colonialism defined, is the policy of a nation that rules or seeks to rule weaker or dependent nations, often with or for economic exploitation. Bowen translates ‘colonialism’ into different circumstances, by interchanging the word ‘nation’ with – family, people, situations, identity.
The body of work is an accumulation of pieces stemming from 1989. Bowen says his own personal colonial project began in the early 1990s with family conflicts, when it became necessary to "address these concrete notions of space, place and personal privilege". The large paintings that he tackled developed slowly and by studying their effects and spaces, the collection grew and became informed by his living experiences, his personal drama and events, in part distilled in the studio atmosphere and space. He says as an artist there is no ideal state to make the work, its substance is literally carved out of a daily and life routine, the work is inevitably affected by just the business of living and being around.
As an artist, if not directly employed to produce an event, as a carnival arts practitioner or as a graphic designer, Bowen says the action of being a painter, in this country, separates an artist from the regular person on the street going about their business. The work of an artist holds no value unless the work has been bought or sold, thereby gaining monetary value, and recorded as a profit. During the past fifteen years, his work represents that moment in space and time when the two ideals, living and being, become fused in the object – something made, realised, brought into material existence.
Edward Bowen has been working in Trinidad since 1985, since returning from England on completion of his H.N.D. in Fine Arts at Croydon College of Design and Technology. He is one of Trinidad’s leading contemporary artists regularly showing locally and abroad. Bowen has never compromised the honesty of his search and his work is imbued with presence. Bowen will be participating in the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil in March 2002. For further information concerning Bowen’s work, go to www.bowenartdesign.com.
‘the lessons
in colonialism’ was part of CCA’s continuous programme of exhibitions
in the Main Gallery at CCA7 from January 31st to 17th April 2002.