LSA Member Tim Fowler speaks to Winsor & Newton as their Featured Artist. Tim talks about his vibrant botanical compositions and their connection to his West African ancestry, the recent transition from painting portraits to plants, what initiated the changes and his plans for future work.
"I started looking into my family history, specifically on my mum’s side of the family from Barbados. I did a DNA ancestral test, expecting to see Barbados and various other Caribbean countries. Instead, it came back with a number of African countries, with nothing from the Caribbean. I knew the basics about the Atlantic slave trade, but it had always felt very far removed from me and my life. Seeing these results in black and white sparked a curiosity in me to learn more.
At the same time, my art practice was already beginning to move away from portraiture, and I had started painting these banana plants another artist had brought into the studio. The two themes eventually merged together, and I started researching more into plantation and migratory crops that came to the Caribbean from Africa, including via slave ships. Banana, plantain, tobacco, cotton, coffee and sugar cane were the first types of plants I painted. This series has developed into anything botanical that has an interesting narrative, meaning or history. ..."
Read the full article on Winsor & Newton's website -
https://www.winsornewton.com/uk/articles/artists/featured-artist-tim-fowler/