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Born 1964 | Johannesburg, South Africa
Bowen Boshier is a quiet, peaceful and thoughtful man. He is truly at home in the wilderness and natural expanses of the South African Karoo and the wilds of Botswana. This is where he perfects his artistic talent as a pencil sketch artist.
A South African wilderness pencil sketch artist, Bowen Boshier, displayed artistic talent from a young age and started exhibiting his pencil sketches in the early 1990s. These detailed pencil drawings received critical praise in the art world and art collectors purchased many of them. Bowen Boshier's original drawings and artworks are now on display in a number of private and bank collections around the world.
At these early art exhibitions a number of people approached Bowen to say how he had changed their way of seeing and appreciating trees and Nature. He wanted to do something for the Wilderness and so he decided reproduce the images as fine art prints and so make them more available.
This has been hugely successful and he receives regular praise for his beautiful artwork. The limited edition fine art prints are in selected art galleries across Southern Africa. His home remains the wilds of Southern Africa, but he has base camps in Cape Town and Wolverfontein Nature Reserve, Karoo.
As an artist, Bowen Boshier finds that pencil is well suited to capturing contrasts and textures. It holds the expectant silence that our African wilderness contains.
Pencil, with its large range of tones, like black and white photography, can carry the essence of a subject. It is slightly abstract in that it shows forms or landscapes that we are familiar with, but without their colour. Our imaginations are compelled to step in and become involved with the image and imbue the work with the colour of our own feelings and experiences.
I love to draw pristine wilderness; to lose myself in an unmarred landscape is to immerse myself in endless time. Through my travels, I discover and get to know places. I spend time on location, sometimes months in one place; walking and watching, sketching and sculpting. I am fascinated by detail so each drawing takes a long time to complete. Creatures get used to my presence and carry on their life around me. I watch birds build their nests, hear them court, witness the first flight of the fledglings.
It is a challenge to isolate a subject or encapsulate a portion of a landscape. By confining it to the boundaries of the paper, it is separated off from its relationship to the rest of the world. Now it has to hold the viewer’s eye; it has to have its own life.
For the cropped-off window to resonate with the essence of the subject, it must also harmonise with the inner landscape of our minds.
I use nature to advise me on aesthetics and balance. The piece must hold a moment in place, a mood or atmosphere that can sing out through time.
Each drawing feels like an expedition, with its preparation, endurance, lessons and satisfaction.
