My name is Frank Bowling and I’m a painter
Today, my friend, Spencer Richard, and my grandson, Frederick Bowling
will show you some of my procedures
Today we are demonstrating some of Frank's techniques
from the artworks in the Tate collection
Spread Out Ron Kitaj
and Sacha Jason Guyana Dreams
We both assist Frank with his paintings
and over the years we've seen him experiment in many, many different ways.
Here are some of the materials that he uses in his paintings
Canvas
Acrylic paint in bright shades
Ammonia
Found objects
Acrylic gel
Water and spray
Spatula, palette knives and brushes
String
Chalk and a file to grate it
Glitter in a salt shaker
Lots of jars, buckets, containers
Ammonia is corrosive and should not be inhaled, touched or swallowed
When following these steps at home, please wear suitable protection
such as masks and gloves
We are starting off by completely saturating the canvas
It breaks the surface of the canvas
Sometimes it's treated a little bit
We put an extra piece of canvas on the floor to absorb the overflow of at this stage water but eventually paint
Squeeze some paint directly from the tube onto the canvas
Spread the paint evenly across the canvas
Once the canvas has stained, we begin to add multiple colors, paint, gel and ammonia
With the ammonia, that breaks down the paint and also the gel so it can flow into each other more
so it's a push and pull
The gel is to thicken up the paint to increase and facilitate the viscosity
As I pour it onto the canvas, it will bleed into the other colour that's already there
or you could establish your own patterns of what you want to see
Geometry is an important feature of Frank's work because of this, circles and rectangles often appear
What I'm about to do is put this gel bucket under the canvas
and then trace some shape on the surface of the canvas
so we have additional elements for improvisation as the canvas develops
In Spread Out Ron Kitaj and Sacha Jason Guyana Dreams you can see that he uses semi-circles
This can be achieved by tying a piece of chalk to a piece of string and securing it in the center of your hand
or if you can't reach a pin, or even better a friend who can help you
As you move the chalk, the string will make sure it's always the same distance from the center
creating an arc or circle
Frank's paintings develop over many months with many layers of paint
and materials being applied to the surface
Each application of paint is a new chance to explore
Try different colours and concentrations
Apply the paint in different ways, such as pouring, using the pallet knife
or spraying water so that it runs down the canvas in droplets
What we're doing at this stage is just picking the canvas up and folding it
to allow the paint to spread across the surface and then we see where we go from there
Frank's painting work is a sort of diary in his life
They often include embedded objects which help tell the story of the time that actually the painting was made
We've collected a few items from around the studio
You can embed these using acrylic gel which creates a thick transparent layer on top of the painting
Dollop the gel onto the canvas using a spatula and then place the objects in it
We’ve placed these shells in the gel randomly
and then the next stage is we smash them up
Anything that looks interesting or attractive or colourful, just go and put it in your painting
We enforce the composition with some strong mark-making
Frank does this in a number of ways
In this work, we have sprinkled gold dust on the shattered shells
and then we will pour ammonia on it to turn the gold into blue
and create another shimmer aspect to the surface
In the final stages
Frank is still concerned with the element of continuance in spontaneity
and as such, any brush that is filled with paint will be flicked onto the surface of the canvas
to create punctuation in the conversation that has already been established
I guess the key element of all of this is to just go for it