Margaret Bowland Portraits: Strength and Vulnerability

"As an artist, I try to use the visual history of art to expose the maelstrom into which we are born —innocents all— and how this innocence is universally challenged by the “egg beater” of history as we desperately try to become our actual selves." - Margaret Bowland

Margaret Bowland's spellbinding and psychologically charged paintings bring viewers face to face with contentious culture while affirming the resilience and triumph of the human spirit. A masterful observer of life’s unpredictable nature, her work conveys universal themes through unusually specific insights. Bowland’s paintings explore the subtle and nuanced edges between strength and vulnerability, certainty and doubt, faith and disbelief. Her probing and deeply personal images call into question our societal expectations of gender, race, and beauty.
"The word “collaboration” is the best one to use for the way that my paintings are developed. But the collaboration is of an odd sort. The person being painted doesn’t sit down with me and discuss his or her conceptions of the work. It begins by my fixation on a particular person." - Margaret Bowland
The Process
Documentary of Margaret Bowland and her Models
Margaret Bowland creates stunning portraits that balance magic with realism. Bowland uses both live models and photographs to create her stunning works. Often her models are not professional models but rather people from her life that she knows and has formed a relationship or curiosity about. She is guided by her models and her fixation with them on a personal and human level. Her models describe her as a warm soul and easy to relax around. She builds her paintings off her idea of the models’ identity, as well as the relationship she has with them. You sense her connection to the person in her work. One of her models stated "...the girl in the painting is Margaret’s interpretation of my identity, and therefore the girl is more Margaret than she is me. That said, the painting feels very real and honest to me."

Ideas, compositions, and aesthetic elements are sometimes planned serendipitously and in the moment, building off sudden inspiration from both the artist and her model. Bowland allows for her models to make choices on details such as clothing and the color of paint they place on their skin. She is interested in their own ownership of their bodies and themselves.
Margaret Bowland

Gilt, 2015

signed on verso by artist

oil on linen

51 x 74 in

Gilt has a double meaning of the word but Bowland is also asking the viewer to see that even though the main character is covered in gold, believing it to be a protective armor, his face still shows you great vulnerability that is not overcome but held in check. His eyes show you what this costs him and the sheer courage he is capable of finding within himself. For Bowland, his courage amidst this tragedy that is real life, is Beauty.

"Beauty is being exactly who you are amidst all that the world does to fracture and destroy you...my job is to record it." - Margaret Bowland

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Margaret Bowland

Dust Up, 2015

signed verso by artist

oil on linen

90 x 60 in

Dust Up was inspired by a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art which featured the arts of the Deccan Plateau in India. Bowland saw a photo of a an Indian temple in the catalogue and imagined the history and stories that might have taken place in that space. She had been painting a black child named Janasia for many years at this point and Bowland suddenly imagined her standing in this temple, twirling.

The Holi Festival had been celebrated for centuries in India and begins with a bonfire to burn bad spirits of the past year away. As part of the worship people would smear the white ash from the fire upon their faces. Now brightly colored powders have replaced the ash, but Bowland was stunned by the fact that every culture stretching back for centuries had sought to whiten its women to make of them objects of worship, blank screens upon which the viewer could project his or her own fantasies.

Bowland thought of all of the strains of culture and influence await any child born onto this earth. They have no defenses against these beliefs, and time has erased many important facts as well. She replaced the mosaic tiles beneath J's feet in the resulting painting, Dust Up, with the original silhouette of the "Barbie" logo. Barbie had been a large influence in her own life and every American girl feels its weight to this day. Bowland created a room that would house all of many of the powers molding the life of this young black girl She had known and loved for 5 years. On top of this all, Bowland painted a bright lazar swoosh to record the collision.

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CAM executive director Gab Smith walks through the exhibition “Painting the Roses Red” by painter Margaret Bowland on Wednesday, April 18, 2018, at CAM Raleigh. "Dust Up" (left) and "Tangled Up in Blue" (right, featuring curator Dexter Wimberly and his son as subjects) are part of a series of large-scale paintings by Bowland on exhibit through June 17, 2018. ROBERT WILLETT RWILLETT@NEWSOBSERVER.COM
Bowland is a faculty member at the New York Academy of Art. She recently had a solo exhibition, “Painting the Roses Red” at the Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh curated by Dexter Wimberly with an accompanying catalogue. Her work has been shown at museums including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Delaware Art Museum, and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. It has appeared in the FX television show, Atlanta. In 2009 she received major recognition as the People’s Choice Award Winner in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Her work is in collections including the collection of Spike Lee, The Estate of Peggy Cooper Cafritz, The Greenville County Museum of Art, The Frost Museum of Art and the Bennett Collection of Women Realists. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
- Margaret Bowland, Motions of Grace, 2012
- Margaret Bowland, Gilt, 2015
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Margaret Bowland Portraits: Strength and Vulnerability

The Process

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