Artist Margaret Bowland described it as “a funeral where you get to be alive.”
It was the day after Bowland’s art opening at Babcock Galleries and the Burlington native was elated — not only was her artwork was on display at this prestigious gallery in midtown Manhattan — but friends and family were in attendance with the exception of her mother, Barbara Bowland of Burlington.
“She wasn’t able to come, but she sent flowers. You could see them as you walked in the door,” Margaret, a painting instructor and graduate adviser for the New York Academy of Art, said in a phone interview from her home in Brooklyn last week.
Bowland has lived and worked in New York for more than 30 years and this is her first solo art show. “Margaret Bowland: Excerpts from the Great American Songbook” opened March 1 and will remain on display until April 22. The show will then go on to the Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, S.C., where it will be on display May 18 through July 17.
The images of young African-American girls in white face was inspired by the Great American Songbook — songs Bowland has enjoyed listening to all of her life, but she exposes what she calls “the lies perpetuated by culture. The irony of the difference between what they’re (young girls) told and what they’ll get. The songs are really beautiful, but they set you up for a tough life. Distinguishing between myth and reality can be painful and yet, I love them.”
When it comes to her artwork, Bowland realizes that not everyone will like it — such is the world of art — but like she tells her students “all of art is an act of seduction. If you can’t get someone to start at it first … it has to be beautiful initially, but you have to feel the difference between what is beautiful and what is being said. You have to be open to any work of art.”
“I get e-mails all of the time from young black women saying ‘thank you for making paintings about us because no one does,’” she said. Her oil painting, “Murakami Wedding” (Portrait of Kenyetta and Brianna), was selected as the People’s Choice Award in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition in 2009 in Washington, D.C.
The way the whole exhibit came to be is “a terrific story,” Bowland explained. “I had put an ad in Art In America; it was a tiny little image, way in the back of the magazine. Well, Thomas Styron, director of the Greenville County Museum saw it and called me out of the blue.” Styron then mentioned Bowland’s work to John Driscoll, owner of Babcock Galleries.
“It was the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said. “It was a miracle, really. It’s very hard to be an artist, especially in New York where there are more artists than galleries.”
Not only is her artwork on display at Babcock Galleries, but it was part of the Armory Show, an art fair featuring artwork from more than 270 galleries in the city, March 3-6.
“It’s a very big deal to get in that, too,” Bowland said. “More than 60,000 people pass through there. It’s just incredible.”
Bowland is married, has two children and lives in a brownstone in Brooklyn. The top floor is her studio and that’s where she creates her artwork, oftentimes massive billboard-like paintings.
Given the upcoming exhibits and attention to her artwork, Bowland said “it absolutely makes me feel like one of the luckiest people on the planet. Thomas Styron gave me a life with one phone call.”
