Systems of Influence and Expanding Abstraction
Bowman’s artistic formation began in a creative household where experimentation with materials formed part of everyday life. Both of his parents sustained active art practices, fostering an environment where visual inquiry was encouraged and supported. A pivotal moment occurred at nineteen when his grandfather gifted him a camera, igniting a lifelong engagement with photography understood as painting with light. The camera introduced new ways of constructing images and perceiving that which is hidden within, laying the groundwork for his multidisciplinary direction. Undergraduate studies at Liverpool Art School broadened his exploration across drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, mixed media, experimental film and animation, establishing a foundation that would later expand through postgraduate study at the Royal College of Art in London.
At the Royal College of Art, Bowman concentrated on experimental film and temporal media, deepening his understanding of rhythm, duration, and structural progression. Influences from Structuralism, Minimalism, Constructivism, Postminimalism, Process Art, and Land Art shaped both his conceptual framework and aesthetic decisions. Artists such as Richard Serra’s investigations into weight and balance reinforced the importance of physical encounter. Paul Klee’s diagrammatic systems, Richard Long’s engagement with landscape and duration, and László Moholy-Nagy’s integration of light and technology in his Light-Space Modulators further expanded his thinking and art practice. The mid century collective Group Zero and early filmmakers Walter Ruttmann and Viking Eggeling contributed to his understanding of sequence, a language of abstraction and narrative progression, elements that remain visible and reframed in his tiled configurations and serial installations.
Photography continues to serve as both document and transformation within Bowman’s practice. Sculptures inspired by Moholy-Nagy and Group Zero, constructed from steel and perspex, are often illuminated by animation and dynamic light projection, generating motion and refraction that he later reframes and records photographically through still images. The camera freezes fleeting configurations, revealing spectral forms and abstract essences embedded within surfaces and mechanical structures. Contemporary figures such as Wolfgang Tillmans and Hiroshi Sugimoto resonate in his expansion of photography into spatial experience, while Julie Mehretu’s layered systems parallel his own ongoing investigations into abstraction. Conceptually, the Orpheus myth, with its universal human themes of love, descent, loss, return, art and death underpin many of Bowman’s works. This Greek myth is a tragedy, rich in metaphor and allegory around the human condition and its frailty that is relevant today and resonates through Bowman’s practice as illustrated in his triptych The Awakening.
This compliments Bowman’s engagement with Zen Buddhist teachings—particularly the concept of Śūnyatā, or emptiness—deeply informs his understanding of interdependence and impermanence. This philosophical grounding shapes his approach to form, space, and time, and is often evident in his abstract photographs and drawings. In these works, emptiness is expressed both as a material reality and a state of mind, evoking the essence of Sunyata while foregrounding process and transience.
“For me photography is ‘drawing with light’, a transformative act that reshapes both documentation and form. I use my sculptures and light mechanisms as a lens, through which I explore concepts of form and emptiness that often result in capturing spectral forms and ethereal traces of light”
