Drawing Dialogues: Ben Bowling & Claudia Tobin on Frank Bowling

Ben Bowling

Ben Bowling is the son of the artist Sir Frank Bowling and, with his brother Sacha, co-directs his father’s studio, and is trustee of the Frank Bowling Foundation. Ben works with galleries, museums and art historians to safeguard his father’s artistic legacy and to enable him to make the critically acclaimed work that is at the heart of his painting practice. Ben is also Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at King's College London and former adviser to the UK Parliament, European Commission, Interpol and the United Nations. His books include 'Violent Racism, Policing the Caribbean' and 'The Politics of the Police'. In his spare time he sings with his band Doc Bowling and his Blues Professors.

Claudia Tobin

Dr Claudia Tobin is a writer, academic and curator. She is the author of 'Modernism and Still Life: Artists, Writers, Dancers' (2020), editor of 'Oh, to be a Painter!' (2021), and co-editor of ;Ways of Drawing: Artists’ Perspectives and Practices; (2019). Claudia has worked on numerous exhibition and research projects, including with Tate, the National Portrait Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum, and on creative collaborations with contemporary artists, musicians and dancers. In 2024 she curated the exhibition 'Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors' at the Garden Museum in London. She is currently writing a book about women artists and writers in the Bloomsbury circle and the creative life of their gardens (forthcoming with Yale).

Claudia teaches modern and contemporary literature and visual cultures and is a Bye-Fellow at Downing College, University of Cambridge, and a Senior Research Associate at the Intellectual Forum, Jesus College. She has been awarded prestigious fellowships including an Early Leverhulme Career Fellowship at Cambridge, a Paul Mellon Post Doctoral Fellowship, and international fellowships at I Tatti Harvard Centre for Renaissance Studies in Florence and at the Huntington Library, California.