My story
I'm Andrea Bowman, an abstract painter working from a studio in Cape Town. I paint large, layered canvases about the places where land meets water.
I grew up close to the sea, and the colours of that coastline have stayed with me: wet sand, kelp, rust on old railings, the green of fynbos after rain. I have painted full time for more than a decade, after years of drawing and printmaking.
How I work
A painting usually begins with a place rather than a picture: a walk along the Atlantic seaboard, a weathered wall, the light at the end of a winter afternoon. I lay down the first colours quickly and loosely, then live with the canvas for a while before going back in.
I build each surface over weeks, sometimes months. Acrylic and oil, sand, plaster and gold leaf go on, are scraped back with palette knives and squeegees, then layered again. Lines are scratched into wet paint, and the edges of earlier layers are left to show through, so every painting carries its own history.
I hope people feel a kind of quiet when they live with one of my paintings, the way you breathe out when you reach the sea.
A painting is finished when I stop wanting to change it. It is signed on the back, varnished, photographed and given its title, and then it waits in the studio for the home it belongs in.
In the studio
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A surface in progress -
Drying on the studio wall -
Gold leaf, before varnishing
Background
Exhibitions
- 2025 Tidelines, solo exhibition, Cape Town
- 2024 Salt and Ochre, group exhibition, Stellenbosch
Collections
- 2025 Private collection, Constantia
- 2024 Boutique hotel collection, Franschhoek
Training
- 2014 Mentorship in mixed media and surface work, Cape Town
- 2010 Drawing and printmaking studies, Cape Town