Ronald Bowen “Open Studio” : Saturday 22 April 1-8 pm. Sunday 23 April, 1-8 pm.
On the weekend of 22-23 April 2017 Ronald Bowen is opening his studio to friends and collectors of Chris Boïcos Fine Arts. Ron Bowen’s studio is situated on the 6th floor of the Cité Montmatre aux artistes, the most impressive complex of artists’ studios in Montmartre specially built to house local artists in the 1920s.
Ronald Bowen’s studio :
Cité Montmatre aux artistes, 189 rue Ordener 75018 Paris.
Door code : 20B09, Bâtiment C, Hall 5, elevator to 6th floor, Studio n. 40/41.
Closest Metros : Jules Joffrin (line 12) or Guy Môquet (line 13).
Bus : 31, 60, 95 (stop Ordener/Danremont)
Cité Montmatre aux artistes
The Cité was created by the initiative of Paris city councilor Jean Varenne who in the 1920s was worried that the gentrification of Montmartre was driving out its traditional population of artists. In 1924 the municipal council purchased the old maquis (wilderness) to the north of the hill to build a great modern complex of artist’s studios. The operation was delayed by financial problems and the impact of the great Depression but was finalized in the 1930s and placed under the aegis of the Paris social housing organism of the time, the HBM (habitations de bon marché). The two great buildings, housing artist’s studios and two garden courtyards, were designed by Adolphe Thiers in a superb mix of the Art Deco and International Modern styles of the era.
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View of the Sacré Cœur from Ronald Bowen’s balcony.
. Ronald Bowen in his studio seated below a pencil portrait of his family.
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Ronald Bowen was born in 1944 and grew up in the small town of Lake Placid, Florida, where his father managed a large citrus operation. He received his BA in Art (advertising design) with minors in art history, music and French from Florida State University in 1967, spending his final year at the university’s center in Florence. In 1966 during the fatal flood of the Arno, Ronald was on hand to help with other international students to salvage manuscripts and paintings from the city’s basements, thus becoming one of the celebrated "mud angels".
The time he spent in Europe was a turning point for Bowen, as he realized that his true vocation was to become a painter and not a commercial artist. Returning home he turned down a job offer in commercial art in New York, deciding instead to become an art teacher, and accepted a teaching post in his hometown high school. It was the year of full desegregation in Florida and new posts were being created to handle the influx.
The draw of Europe was, however, too difficult to resist. On July 1968, Bowen left again on a one-way plane ticket, this time, to Paris, where he spent the summer painting and job hunting. In September he accepted a high school art teaching post in England, at an international boarding school in a county manor house estate near Cambridge. The following year he returned to art school enrolling at the Ecole Nationale des arts décoratifs in Nice and working evenings in a hotel off the Promenade des Anglais.
In 1970 Bowen was back in Paris on an Artist-in-Residence grant at the Fondation des Etat-Unis, at Paris Cité Universitaire, where he resided for three years. In September 1973, thanks to his previous two years of teaching experience, he began teaching art part-time at the American School of Paris in Saint-Cloud where he stayed for the next 35 years, retiring in 2008.
The part-time teaching allowed him ample time and energy to pursue his own art and professional career. In 1993 Ronald Bowen obtained French nationality, making him a citizen of both the U.S. and France. In the early 1970’s Bowen experimented briefly with abstraction. He quickly returned, however, to realism, inspired in part by the upsurge of the American Photorealist movement of that time, but even more deeply by a desire to apply the style and techniques of the Italian Renaissance painters to his own everyday environment.
Bowen records what draws his eye - particularly strong plays of light and shadow - through photography. He uses his photographs as the basis for his painted compositions, without, however, precisely copying the original image.
Sortie de Piscine, 2016, Oil on canvas 130 x 162 cm, 2016.
Siège d’Autobus, 2012 Oil on canvas 120 x 120 cm.
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Instead he re-interprets the image through memory, seeking within it a metaphysical quality that is, most often, several degrees away from reality. He achieves depth and luminosity on his canvases through a succession of thin layers of paint and a final transparent glaze. He has also developed a similar technique of fine overlay for his colored pencil drawings, bringing them in appearance very close to his oil paintings.
Dry Martini 2015 Color pencil 30.5 x 20.3 cm.
Flacon d’Huile d’Olive, 2014 Color pencil 31.9 x 20.5 cm.
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The artist’s intention is to create the image of a fragment of reality that is close to life-size or a little larger than life so that the viewer will have the feeling of interacting with it. There is no story attached to the image other than that of the profound mystery of life. It’s up to the viewer to find his own meaning beyond that. Ronald has exhibited his art extensively in galleries in France as well as in Florida, Washington DC, New York, London, Monaco and Greece.
Ronald Bowen and his partner Danny in Paris, 2015.
Ronald Bowen : Personal exhibitions
Ronald Bowen : Group exhibitions
Ronald Bowen : Website
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Available Studio Paintings :
Metro Seat Series - Oil on canvas
Available Studio Drawings :
