Conrad of Canvas Brings the Sea to Life in Expressionist Paintings

The ship, a fragment detached from the Earth, went on lonely and swift like a small planet. --Joseph Conrad

Like Joseph Conrad, Richard Bosman tells colorful adventures of the sea, only Bosman lays them on thickly with a paintbrush.

Bosman, 45, was in town last weekend for the opening of “Gifts of the Sea,” an exhibition of his densely textured oil paintings at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Gallery through June 25.

His paintings heave, hiss and seethe with the motions and sounds of the sea. Bosman’s curling, white-capped breakers and foggy, still waters are not realistic but expressionistic, pulsing with the ocean’s contained energy. And yes, they do tell tales. He admits as much, unlike some artists.

“The biggest problem painting is you have to communicate with an audience,” Bosman said Friday after a walk through the exhibit. “The art of communicating is a basic problem. I don’t know what it is, but some images have it and some don’t.

“Most of my work is concerned with allegory or metaphor. If I do a painting of a volcano, it may be about passion. Then, I have to turn it back into the material (the application of the paint) so that those ideas will be available, easy to get at in reading the painting.”

Bosman, who lives in New York, had an adventurous childhood, which was supported by the sea. He was born in Madras, India, to a Dutch ship captain and an Australian mother who loved reading novels and mysteries.

Bosman grew up in India, Holland, Indonesia, Egypt, Australia and England. For a while, his father held a job as a Suez Canal pilot. When riots began erupting in Egypt, Bosman was sent at 6, to a boarding school in Perth, Australia.

At 19, Bosman spent two years as a “jackeroo” on a sheep station near Kalgoorlie, Australia.

“I didn’t want to do that,” Bosman said. “I found it lonely and boring.”

In his spare time on the sheep station, he painted some watercolors. The satisfaction convinced him to continue.

With the support of his parents, Bosman entered the Byam Shaw School of Painting & Drawing in London, a traditional art school, for four years. Then, he spent two years, from 1969-1971, at the New York Studio School in New York City.

He came to the United States fascinated with American art, especially abstract expressionism.

“It was much more energetic,” Bosman said. “European art was more decorative.

“But when I came to the New York Studio School, I found I was 10 years behind time. Minimalism was in.”

The abstract expressionists were out. In the trendy world of art, their time had come and gone.

Bosman took to New York.

“It seemed very much like home to me,” he said. “I think I was attracted to the mix of all the cultures in one place, the eccentricity. It is a very accepting city.”

In New York, the artists hung out together and drank together and supported each other. Artists survived by painting--not canvases--but people’s apartments and lofts. If someone had a job doing a loft, he would tell his friends, and they would all have work for a month.

Bosman continued to paint his own pieces at night. When he had enough paintings, he would make photographic slides to take to the dealers. But the rejections got to be depressing as time went by, and the survival mode began to wear.

Then, in 1980, after almost a decade of struggle, he was selected for a group show titled “Illustration & Allegory” at the Brooke Alexander gallery.

His three paintings were derived from detective novels and showed Chinese men and women. “High Tide,” depicted a Chinese woman on a raft in a costume with moons on it. Beyond her was a full moon. “East Wind” showed a Chinese man wearing a kimono that was blowing back in the wind. His back was to the viewer and he faced the sea.

Bosman’s work from the early ‘80s period, which used images and symbols, the way detective books used clues, was loved and hated. Later pieces were titled, “The Assassin,” “The Red Staircase” and “Death of a Gambler.”

“It was kind of contentious work,” Bosman said. “The idea of doing a painting about violence caused some pure-minded artists to resent it and to resent the success of it.”

In the three earlier Chinese paintings, the sea was in the background. Gradually the water rose in importance to the foreground. In part because of the consistency and nature of oil paint, he said.

“The great thing about oil painting is that you put the stuff on and it’s moveable like water,” Bosman said. “You can move it around and slide it around.

“It’s a physical experience for me--painting. Getting that thick, juicy paint up there . . . and trying to make it into the real substance of the sea. The paint is thick. It buries objects, the same as the sea.”