Drawing into painting Frank Bowling in focus

This film follows Sir Frank Bowling from childhood in Guyana to his emergence as a leading figure in abstraction. Through the voices of Bowling himself, his family and archivist, it shows how personal history and inherited craft shape his studio practice. It looks to his roots in the Royal College of Art and lessons from his mother’s dressmaking. The story moves from London to New York and traces the progression from early sketches to the map paintings and, later, to his poured, paint-saturated, colour-soaked works.