Dale Bowen

before Dale Bowen ever picked up a brush, he spent twenty years working with clay - not as a hobbyist, but as a master potter for Coalport and Wedgwood, applying the rare pâte-sur-pâte to museum-grade pieces that exists in edition of one. That formation in patience, in surface, in the weight of making things properly, is visible in everything he has painted since.

Born in Staffordshire, his transition to acrylic canvas work was not a departure, but a return- painting, he has said, was always his first love. The ceramics simply taught him how to look.