Born in Guyana (then British Guiana) in 1934, Frank Bowling arrived in England in his late teens, going on to study at the Royal College of Art. Shortly after graduation he moved to New York and has since split his time between a studio there and one in London. His painting practice has pushed the formal language of abstraction, both as a political choice and personal statement, with many of his works infused with cultural, personal, and social meaning. Embedded is a lived set of experiences – in particular the experience of migration and cross-cultural relationships – as well as a deep engagement with postcolonialism and history. These consistent threads in his work, and his use of luscious, incandescent color, imbue the large-scale print “Pouring Over 2 Morrison Boys & 2 Maps I” with narrative and meaning. In an allusion back to his earlier work in which the black body is implicit by his adding of barely visible photo silkscreen images of members of his family and close friends, the title of the print not only references Bowling’s close relationship to Toni Morrison but that of a photograph he took of her two sons (the “2 Morrison Boys”) a ghostly image of which is evident in the print. The image of the two heads is more evident in a related painting, “Pouring Over 2 Morrison Boys & 2 Maps II,” that Bowling made three years earlier in 2016 with similarly luscious colors.

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