Frank Bowling

Cobble Wobble

£620,000

2022
Acrylic and acrylic gel on canvas with marouflage
182.9 x 188.5 x 4 cm / 72 x 74 ¼ x 1 ⅝ in

‘Cobble Wobble’ (2022) exemplifies Frank Bowling’s innovative and complex late-career style. Over the last two decades, Bowling has become more experimental, combining different techniques and formats from his previous series to create intensely sumptuous and assertive paintings. ‘Cobble Wobble’ draws on several of the artist’s most renowned bodies of work, combining the luminous colors of his ‘map paintings’ from the 1960s, the atmospheric marbling and drips from his radical ‘poured paintings’ from the 1970s, and the heavily textured surfaces of his work from the 1980s.

A striking late work, ‘Cobble Wobble’ showcases the artist’s remarkable ability to explore, invert and reimagine his own processes in a tireless exploration of his medium’s potential. Bowling’s early experimentations with acrylic paint—staining with pure color, building up thick layers with palette knifes, and dripping diluted washes of color across his canvases—laid the foundations for his profound understanding of the possibilities and nuances of his medium. ‘Cobble Wobble’ is the result of over six decades of experience and innovation.

To make ‘Cobble Wobble,’ Bowling applied acrylic gel to his monumental canvas with a plasterer’s spatula, creating a grid of squares. Once dry, the translucent acrylic ridges, several of which have been enhanced with cadmium yellow and fiery red, acted as barriers, catching and redirecting the cascade of paint and water that Bowling dripped and sprayed onto the canvas. The uniquely textured surface, with its raised ridges and shimmering pearlescence dust, reflects and shifts the appearance of the jewel-like colors across ‘Cobble Wobble.’

Born in Guyana in 1934, Bowling moved to London in 1953. In 1959, he enrolled at the prestigious Royal College of Art. After relocating to New York in 1966, he departed from figurative painting in favor of monumental, lyrical abstractions. Later he divided his time between studios in London and New York. Memories of each continue to influence Bowling’s unique form of abstraction, which melds his highly personal take on American color field painting and his long-standing interest in British landscape painters, including J. M. W. Turner and John Constable.

As Mel Gooding has argued, Bowling is ‘looking with modernist eyes’ at the landscapes of Turner and Constable ‘to find in their work the abstract qualities of light, color and touch that might invigorate a modernist, objective presentation of natural phenomena.’ [2] Bowling, who lives near Tate Britain, has stated: ‘It’s exciting and challenging to work in London, Turner’s town, and the pressures of the weight of British tradition is exhilarating.’ [3]

Still working at the age of 89, Bowling has been described as ‘an intensely combative artist, whose apparently endless energy is engendered in competitive creative ambition.’ [4] A complex synthesis of transatlantic influences and ingenious innovation, Bowling’s late work continues to push the boundaries of painting. Combining the celebrated hallmarks of Bowling’s extraordinary practice, ‘Cobble Wobble’ exemplifies the artist’s radical experimentation.

About the artist

Over the course of six decades, Frank Bowling has relentlessly pursued a practice that boldly expands the possibilities of paint. Ambitious in scale and scope, his dynamic engagement with the materiality of his chosen medium, and its evolution in the broad sweep of art history, has resulted in paintings of unparalleled originality and power. Bowling has been hailed as one of the foremost British artists of his generation. He became a Royal Academician in 2005 and was awarded the OBE for services to art in 2008. He received a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in October 2020 and, in 2022, was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize by the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig.

Learn more

1.) Frank Bowling quoted in Hester Lacey, ‘Frank Bowling. ‘I want to make the best painting in the world ever,’ Financial Times, July 3, 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/d4bdb2ee-e2c4-43cf-b571-61f44ae1fa08 (accessed July 15, 2021).
2.) Mel Gooding, ‘Frank Bowling,’ Second Edition, London/UK: Royal Academy of Arts, 2021, p. 99.
3.) Frank Bowling quoted in Mel Gooding, ‘Frank Bowling. Surroundings Towards the Definition of an Individual Talent,’ in ‘The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain,’ London/UK: Hayward Gallery, 1989, p. 121.
4.) Mel Gooding, ‘Frank Bowling,’ Second Edition, London/UK: Royal Academy of Arts, 2021, p. 172.