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Bowen, 80, unfolds an easel before gathering with other painters Bob Bowen, 80, paints an Italian seascape he spotted in a magazine. He began going blind at the age of 62 due to macular degeneration. |
Bob Bowen first picked up a paintbrush more than 50 years ago--and dropped it almost immediately.
He was trying to paint a watercolor of his uncle's New Hampshire cottage, but what was quaint and adorable in real life was less so on paper.
"It didn't look like a cottage when I got done with it," Bowen said of his first creation. "It was a disaster."
That's hard to imagine glancing around Bowen's Stafford County home, where the walls are covered with framed beach scenes and sunrises he's painted over the last few years--all since being declared legally blind.
By necessity, he steers clear of fine details, but his pieces burst with bright colors and broad strokes: roiling waves, salty sea spray, brilliant wildflowers.
Bowen, 80, says he's a much more relaxed artist than when he attempted that cottage painting all those decades ago.
"At that time, I didn't know that if you paint a mistake, who cares? You just paint over it," he said. "If you worry about it, it's not going to be fun anymore."
His motto these days: "No worries, no frowns."
Bowen, a Boston native, hails from a fairly artistic family--his kids and grandkids excel at everything from landscape design to computer animation.
But for years after the cottage incident, he studiously avoided any serious pursuit of art, satisfying his creative urges by drawing pictures of dogs and horses for his grandchildren.
He served 20 years in the Navy and another 20 working for the personnel department at Sears before being told that his vision was failing.
"I thought I needed new glasses. I went to the doctor and he said, 'You've got a serious problem,'" said Bowen, who learned in 1991 that he had macular degeneration.
The condition left the center of his visual field dark, though he still has some peripheral vision. It did not, however, destroy his artistic spirit.
After he and his wife, Nancy, moved to Falls Run in 2003, Bowen poked about the 55-and-over community, looking for something fun to do.
It wasn't long before he signed up for the art workshop, a weekly meeting of painters of varying skill levels who traded tips, tech- niques and homemade snacks.
The workshop's founder, a Falls Run resident named Bill Williams, urged the group to embrace the unknown when it came to painting.
"He said, 'Just let your imagination go,'" said Bowen, who did just that, shrugging it off when a bowl of apples he painted looked more like a bowl of tomatoes.
"That's what happens when you paint something," he said. "It might turn into something else."
Not long before Williams died, he urged the group to continue painting together.
"So that's what we do," Bowen said.
FINDING INSPIRATION
They meet every Tuesday afternoon at the Falls Run clubhouse, lugging works-in-progress and tubes of watercolors and oil paints.
At a recent gathering, Bowen squeezed dollops of acrylic paint onto a makeshift pallet, then brushed a sunset across a small canvas.
While that one dried, he worked on a larger painting of an Italian waterfront. He had spied the original image, complete with flower boxes, a rock wall and ancient temples, in a magazine.
Often, he paints images from photographs he's taken on vacation. One of his earliest inspirations came from an oil painting he saw on the wall of St. Mary's Hospital in Richmond, where his wife was being treated for ovarian cancer.
He tried to re-create that Italian landscape, with a farmhouse and a field of poppies, but he just couldn't get it right and ultimately stashed the image in his laundry room.
Nancy, his wife of 56 years, died in August 2007. A year later, Bowen pulled out the landscape and fiddled with it, adding a road, trees and hills, and larger poppies in the foreground.
A few weeks later, at the Falls Run community art show, a woman gushed over the work. She and her husband had rented a place in Tuscany once, and it looked just like Bowen's painting, she insisted.
She bought the painting, something Bowen figures would tickle his wife.
"She'd really flip over that," he said. "That thrilled me no end."
A PASSION FOR PAINT
He actually sold seven paintings at that show, a personal record. But he doesn't sweat the ones left behind.
"If I don't sell them," he said, "I give them away to unsuspecting relatives."
Bowen said his poor eyesight doesn't really get in the way of his painting. He peers at his canvas through a magnifying glass, tilting his head to examine the work out of the corner of his eye.
His workshop colleagues have given him a few tips over the years. Use sponges to paint clouds and black markers to draw fine points.
Tape is great for creating straight lines, like horizons and lighthouses. And black paint hides a lot.
Fellow painter Carolyn Crosen, who also plays bocce with Bowen, said his paintings are warm and colorful because he often paints what he knows.
"I think everybody ought to get a hold of one of his paintings because he's going to be famous," she said.
While he does most of his work in the well-lit conference room of the Falls Run clubhouse, Bowen occasionally paints in the privacy of his laundry room.
"I do the difficult things at home because I usually curse," he said, chuckling.
Even so, he rarely abandons a project these days. Whether it's a New Hampshire cottage or a European farmhouse, Bowen embraces the challenge.
"I already bought a frame," he said of his latest Italian landscape. "Now all I have to do is finish the painting."
Edie Gross: 540/374-5428
Email: egross@freelancestar.com
