Day Bowman

Day Bowman’s paintings recreate the coastal landscape of her childhood home; capturing the tide, the peppery grey sand and the sunlight as it beams down and laps up the sea. With a style which treads the tangential boundary between abstraction and figuration, Day creates complex and inquisitive works full of movement, colour and wonder.

Day Bowman’s Early Career and Practice

A graduate of the Chelsea School of Art, London, Day's style is characterised by chaotic mark-making, explosive colour, ribbon-like lines and ink spills. Gestural brushstrokes, wildly atmospheric palettes and curious, earthy textures abound in works such as her Rainy Day and Road Trip, multimedia blends of oil, charcoal and Conte on canvas. Some of her work harbours subtly political undertones, pertaining to a wave of environmental decay, industrial waste and intolerance.

Awards and Collections

In the past twelve months her work has gained first prize in the Anima Mundi International Painting Prize and exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2019; this was quickly followed by being awarded first prize in the Bath Arts Open 2019 and first prize for the inaugural Wales Contemporary 2019. Most recently Day was awarded the Winsor & Newton Prize 2020 by the Royal Institute for Painters in Watercolours.

Tearing up the Rule Book, a solo international exhibition at Westminster Reference Library London and Atelier Melusine France was praised by critics and bloggers at its London showing in March 2019. In 2012 she was commissioned to produce a series of giant hoardings for Weymouth Railway Station, host town to the Olympic Sailing and Paralympic Sailing events.

Day’s work is held in numerous private and public collections worldwide including Hilton Hotel Group; British Dental Association; Dorset County Hospital, St. Vincent and Grenadines Govt. Art Collection, the Priseman Seabrook Collection and the Yantai Art Museum Collection China.