Michel Bowes
Painting Time in Flux
© Michel Bowes: artist in the studio with the cat
“You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing– what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that. Art is the highest form of hope. It makes no sense to expect or claim to ‘make the invisible visible’, or the unknown known, or the unthinkable thinkable.”
– Gerhard Richter
About the Artist
Michel Bowes studied Fine Art in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. After graduating, he worked in the video game industry before returning to painting, his primary passion. His practice is rooted in figurative and tonal painting, drawn to its richness, diversity, and ability to take on multiple forms.
Beginning with immediate and familiar subjects, Bowes’ work moves beyond the simple depiction of a moment or place. His paintings carry layers of social and historical meaning, shaped by a sensitive and reflective approach. He seeks a balance between accessibility and depth, creating works that resonate intuitively while inviting deeper interpretation.
Working from observation, Bowes explores gesture, color, composition, and proportion, guided by a continuous process of questioning and analysis. Recurring themes of absence and distance run throughout his work, sometimes subtly, sometimes more explicitly. His subjects range from intimate still lifes—such as tableware and roses—to landscapes in which sociopolitical undertones emerge. Across these series, he remains attentive to modest, everyday moments, using them to explore broader questions of presence and perception.
His work has been exhibited widely in France and internationally, including recent presentations at L’Abbaye de Fontdouce (2025), Atelier Galerie de L’Abbaye, Saintes (2025), Salle du Belvédère, Saint-Savinien (2024), and L’Espace Culturel des Tanneries du Pays de Conches (2023, 2016). Earlier exhibitions include shows at Espace Korçë, Saintes (2018, 2022), La TEC, Voiron (2020), the Institut Bernard Magrez, Bordeaux (2017), the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (Biennale 109, 2013), and Cork Street Open, London (2012), among others.
Ultimately, Bowes’ work invites a pause: a moment to step back from the noise, to observe more closely, and to reflect on what it means simply to be present. He lives and works in Saintes, historic town located in the Charente-Maritime department of southwestern France, within the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region.
© Michel Bowes: Land of Milk and Honey, oil on paper, 150 x 200 cm
“I constantly ask myself: what am I doing? Why? Am I pushing the work far enough? The painting itself is just the trace of these ongoing questions, and it is this sense of rigor that continues to guide my practice.”
Although art was encouraged in his home from an early age, Michel Bowes has always maintained a clear separation between artistic practice and financial concerns. For him, art was never something to be compromised for the sake of money, nor a means of pursuing it.
Being authentic and offering a form of testimony through painting lies at the heart of his work. “Making work is what is important to me, making sense through looking and drawing; to show the brevity of time we have in this life. Time is a flux and we are part of that flux.” He describes his paintings as attempts to capture an instant—something fleeting yet enduring—imbued with a quiet awareness of memento mori: “I constantly ask myself: what am I doing? Why? Am I pushing the work far enough? The painting itself is just the trace of these ongoing questions, and it is this sense of rigor that continues to guide my practice.”
Each piece becomes a trace of presence, a reflection on time passing, and a way of holding onto what inevitably slips away. In this sense, his work can be seen in dialogue with painters such as Peter Doig or Luc Tuymans, who similarly engage with memory, atmosphere, and the subtle tension between presence and absence. Like them, Bowes does not seek to fix meaning, but rather to open a space where perception, recollection, and interpretation can quietly unfold.
© Michel Bowes: To The Person Sitting in The Darkness, oil on paper, 150 x 100 cm
“Time is a flux and we are part of that flux.”
© Michel Bowes: Angelus, from the Landscapes series, 150 x 100 cm, oil on paper
© Michel Bowes: The Other Side, from the Landscapes series, 150 x 100 cm, oil on paper
This awareness of being within the flux of time—almost held or suspended within it—is particularly evident in Bowes’ landscape series. As he explains, “Though they are just the eye level, horizons are places you can never quite reach; they are an Event Horizon beyond which you cannot see as the gravity is too strong.” In this way, the horizon becomes less a destination than a limit of perception, reinforcing a sense of distance, inaccessibility, and the quiet tension of being bound to time and space.
A similar sensitivity to the passage and value of time emerges in his Object series, where a form of quiet indifference comes into play. As Bowes notes, “You look at these objects every single day, they are opposite of dramatic but probably the only things you will see for the rest of your life; it is like life slowing time.” Through these familiar, almost overlooked subjects, the work draws attention to the unnoticed continuity of everyday life, inviting a deeper awareness of its duration and subtle significance.
© Michel Bowes: Lobster Shirt #2, 100 x 70 cm, 2024
© Michel Bowes: Lunevile Shelves, 100 x 70 cm, 2025
“When I paint objects, I try to make them anti-dramatic, avoiding the term ‘still life.’ I’m not interested in creating a narrative, but simply in describing a moment of existence”, explains the artist.
Life Ranger is a series that emerges from artist’s approach to psychogeography—the notion that a place is not only defined by its physical presence, but also by the emotional and psychological experiences it generates. It is a collection of drawings functionning as small fragments of wandering through life. These works are, in a sense, universal. They point toward something we can all feel and recognize. While they may appear restrained or even unemotional at first glance, they are in fact deeply charged with feeling.
Resisting any fixed interpretation, these drawings aim to remain as open and as honest as possible—traces of movement, perception, and lived experience.
© Michel Bowes: Insistence #2, 140 x 100 cm, 2016
© Michel Bowes: Saintes, Living Room, 100 x 167 cm, marker, 2021
“In art, one should be completely free. Art is the expression of true independence of thought and feeling.”
This sense of freedom finds a strong resonance in Bowes’ series Cartographie du quotidien. These works evoke a relationship to place that is both familiar and strangely distant at the same time. Often inspired by photographs, the paintings appear like deserted memories—quiet, suspended, almost emptied of narrative.
They do not seek to tell a story, but rather to register a moment of attention. Each image marks a pause: something that stopped the artist, however ordinary it may seem. A street in Belgrade, an unnoticed corner, an apparently anodine scene—these fragments become points of focus.
In this way, the paintings function as moments of suspension, invitations to slow down and to see more clearly. What matters is not the subject itself, but the act of noticing it—the subtle shift from passing through a place to truly perceiving it.
© Michel Bowes: Beograd (Belgrade) #4, 21 x 29.7 cm, 2022
Bowes’ practice is grounded in a deep commitment to artistic freedom, a principle he expresses clearly: “In art, one should be completely free. Art is the expression of true independence of thought and feeling.” This belief underpins both his approach and his choice of medium.
He gravitates toward figurative and tonal painting for its ability to communicate through a universal language—one that remains accessible to all. Rather than working on canvas, Bowes prefers more immediate and tactile supports such as paper, card, and wood, which allow for a closer, more direct engagement with the image.
© Michel Bowes: Mèze #8, 21 x 29.7 cm, 2022
The precision and detail found in his work stem from an intense act of looking. As he explains, “every mark you put down, you judge it,” emphasizing the constant dialogue that unfolds throughout the process. For Bowes, this dialogue is more important than form itself. Paradoxically, achieving true freedom in art also requires a certain release of control—a willingness to let the work evolve beyond intention.
In this sense, exhibiting the work becomes the final chapter: the moment where the private process opens outward, inviting the viewer into that ongoing exchange.
© Michel Bowes: Dying of the Light, 21 x 29.7 cm, 2024
To conclude, I asked Bowes what his definition of art might be. His response came immediately, with a striking directness—something instinctive, almost unfiltered, as if drawn from the very core of his practice. “If it can make you cry, it is good art. Touching even some small, truthful part of humanity, is what makes art great. When you have done and tried everything, that is what makes the piece function.” In this clarity, stripped of theory or ornament, lies perhaps the essence of his work: an art that does not seek to impress, but to reach something deeply human, quietly and sincerely.
“If it can make you cry, it is good art. Touching even some small, truthful part of humanity, is what makes art great.”
More about the artist:
Official website: https://michelbowes.eu/
Instagram: @michebowes_buzenval17
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