By Ed Goldman
In addition to running into San Francisco artist Robert Bowen at some of the many shows in which his work has been showcased over the years, I still picture him at two distinct moments: one was when I watched him work and the other was when I was the bystander to a love story.
The first flashback is of a blisteringly hot summer day in Sacramento—I repeat myself—when he was covering an exterior wall of Archival Gallery in East Sacramento with a vividly detailed, 30-foot-wide by eight-foot-high acrylic painting of a wasp/machine. Though impressionistic, Bowen rendered the piece large enough to cause nightmares for anyone driving by on nearby Folsom Boulevard or down the well-traveled alley leading to the parking lot the gallery shares with a neighborhood watering hole, Cheaters.
Working shirtless, Bowen seemed oblivious to the global warming directed at him, retaining his figurative cool even when a couple of news crews came by to record a work-in-progress that was literally a sweat-equity undertaking.
Why literally? That has to do with the second extended encounter I had with Bowen. Commissioned by gallery owner D Oldham Neath, Bowen would be paid for his work with the keys to a 2003 100th-anniversary Harley-Davidson Sportster (for those not born to be wild, that’s a motorcycle). It had been the pride and joy of his closest friend, Tom Neath, D’s husband. She had bought it for him as an anniversary present.
Here’s what I wrote of the swap for my column in the Sacramento Business Journal in 2019: “Because he has Parkinson’s disease, Neath knew his days of roaring up and down I-5 on his motorcycle, going to and from the couple’s second home in Dunsmuir in the breathtaking Trinity Mountains, had to end.”
After a decade-long struggle, Tom passed away a few years after the “barter.” At the moment, Bowen keeps the motorcycle at the gallery.
I caught up with the artist last week to talk about what he’s been up to in the past five years. It was a very rough time for him: he had just lost his mom, who had been “the most blindly supportive person I’ve ever known in my life.” The good news is he’s painting his way through his grief: “giant paintings,” he explains: 60 x 90 inches, as well as “10 to 12 medium-sized pieces because not everyone has the space for the big ones.” He’s working toward his third solo show, which would be his second at the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco.
Much of Bowen’s work has been captured in book form, the most recent being “Blasphemous Nature” which features “the past 10 years of my work.” It’s available at his website (robertbowenart.com) or from Archival Gallery (archivalgallery.com). If you’re in Sacramento, you can also purchase the book in person at the gallery, located at 3223 Folsom Blvd.
Bowen has been married 11 years to the marvelously talented artist Carrie Cottini (the couple has been together 15 years). Cottini also works as a development pro for the foundation Edible Schoolyard, created by Alice Waters, founder of the justifiably famous Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley. “She’s taken a bit of a pause in her painting career,” Bowen says, “and I’m urging her to return to it. She’s an incredibly talented artist.”
Takes one to know one, Robert.
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