Michael Bowen

By Ken Hall

Through vision, charisma, and focus, artist that are not on everone's
lips take their place in art history by virtue of the huge mark they leave on
culture. This can be said of artist Michael Bowen.

Bowen, who lives and works in Hawaii, was himself a pollinator for two
significant artistic eras - the Beat '50s and the related Haight-Ashbury '60s. He can speak first-hand about love-ins, peace-ins, exuberant sexuality and a world wandering.

And, throughout it all, he has never missed a day of painting. "I create art each day," he said. "I have never known anything else. Art, and the action of creating art, have satisfied all my questions about mortality, existence and human nature."

Think of the '50s and '60s and you might hear Ravi Shankar playing his sitar and smell incense burning (Bowen hung out with this crowd). You will see John Lennon and Yoko Ono in bed before the cameras (Bowen worked in Lennon's studio and captured the singer in a series of works). You may recall the late and brilliant Dr. Timothy Leary, (Bowen shared ideas of shamanism with Leary and the two became fast friends). Or, you might conjure up the heyday of Pop Art icon Andy Warhol (Bowen worked with him as well).

As we witness a rebirth of interest in the 50s and 60s, Bowen continues to make a compelling and original body of work in oils, collage, assemblage
and other media. "I use all mediums I find fitting for a work of art now, as I have always done," he said.

Bowen is an instinctual colorist. Hues are exuberant and quiet to equal effect. For every stroke that seems intuitive, you can bet there is an underlying careful concept. In his work titled Woman, Bowen's gesture and color turn the specifics of womanhood into an iconic and timeless notion of the feminine.

"I travel, observe and paint," Bowen said. "The subjects select themselves based on my curiosity. I can't even say that I adhere to one specific style of painting. Each work evolves according to its need to be created."

When Bowen says he travels, that is an understatement. He has lived and worked in India, Thailand, Meso America, Florence, Italy and "half the world." He's studied American Indian symbology with Ram Dass and mysticism with Sufi masters. He's deeply rooted in the spiritual life.

The life journey began, in of all places, in the lap of opulence: Beverly Hills, Calif. Bowen was born there, in 1937, the son of a successful dentist. His family hobnobbed with luminaries like Bing Crosby and Benjamin Segal. Young Michael was a free spirit who thought often and seriously about art. So when his parents sent him off to military school as a very young child, Bowen rebelled and ran away. The following year, having rejected his parents' wealth and their lifestyle, he enrolled in drawing classes at Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles.

All the while, Bowen was getting another kind of education: he hit the streets to learn of life and seek enlightenment. He had the good fortune to apprentice under the artist Ed Keinholz, and he hung out with other big names in L.A.'s Laurel Canyon art district of the early '50s.

Bowen and his bohemian nexus would make art from any manner of debris: old cars, found junk, magazines, collaged photos, you name it. Bowen and his colleagues were out to refine and expand our very notions of both art and life. Art was anything the artist decided to call art. Life was something to be experienced to the edge.

In the late '50s, Bowen made his way to San Francisco, where he hung out with such Beat culture luminaries as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Norman Mailer and William Burroughs. All, like Bowen, had fertile, pivotal minds, and all had dropped out of mainstream culture.

But even San Francisco had its limits. When SF reacted to the Beats with
repressve laws, Bowen bolted for Mexico. There, he continued a lifelong
interest in metaphysics, non-Western spirituality, expanded consciousness and universal symbols. "These are dimensions of human expression that I feel are yet today intertwined with the ageless, almost magical ritual of art making," he said.

From Mexico, he went to New York, met Timothy Leary and Andy Warhol, and got involved in the anti-war movement of the '60s. As part of that movement, Bowen was determined to drop 200 pounds of daisies on the steps of the Pentagon as an emblem of the make peace/not war philosophy. But the plan was foiled. "So I packed what flowers I could in my car and passed them out at the demonstration in D.C. that day," he said. The result: photos of hippies placing Bowen's daisies into the gun barrels of riot police were published in Time magazine and became iconic symbols of the era.

Michael Bowen's art has been shown in galleries and in museums worldwide, including the Whitney Museum in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, the Now Gallery in Los Angeles and Phoenix Media in Livorno, Italy.

Anyone interested in purchasing either an original work by Mr. Bowen or a s/n limited-edition giclee may visit www.michaelbowenpartners.com or e-mail info@michaelbowenpartners.com. The phone number for Michael Bowen Partners is toll-free: (888) 712-2013.

Michael Bowen

"Jester" edition of 150 giclee on paper 24"x18". Edition of 150 Giclee on canvas 37"x25".

"Mango Tree" 2004, oil on canvas.

"Evening Jazz" edition of 150 giclee on paper 24"x18". Edition of 150 giclee on canvas 35"x25".

"Homage to Art Pepper" edition of 150 giclee on paper 26"x18". Edition of 150 giclee on canvas 36"x25".

"Jazz Players" 2004 oil on canvas 48"x72".

"Tavola Toscana" edition of 150 giclee on paper 25"x18". Edition of 150 giclee on canvas 35"x25".