I am a landscape painter, usually working directly from nature in a thick vigorous oil paint impasto with a strong emphasis on color.  Color is everything to me, expressing intensity of emotion, as well as defining space.

Color and form are freely interpreted, but it remains important to me to work from nature.  I love the directness and energy of dealing with the dynamically changing conditions of nature while making art. Bugs, heat, cold, wind, changing light, and the smells, sounds and sights of nature all contribute to the overall experience of painting. It isn’t a particularly relaxing or controlled way of working, but I enjoy the spontaneity.

An Expressionist at heart, I am not so much describing a place as expressing feelings. My interest is in the paint, the color and brushstrokes; I want to see the paint do something that I haven’t made it do before. But ultimately I want my paintings to take the viewer somewhere-somewhere they may (or may not) have been before.

Bowland paints the way Janis Joplin sang-bold, gutsy, colorful and passionate. -Mark Hinson, arts writer for the Tallahassee Democrat

A Midwesterner by upbringing, I grew up in Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan, with frequent trips to the Art Institute of Chicago, where even as a child, the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings of Monet and Van Gogh inspired and excited me. For almost 20 years I lived and painted in North Florida. I received my BFA in Painting from Florida State University. My MFA in Painting is from Arizona State University in Tempe. After serving as Director of the contemporary 621 Gallery in Tallahassee and Arts in Public Places Director for the Cultural Resources Commission for the City of Tallahassee, I moved to Valdosta in 2002 to take the position of Gallery Director and Assistant Professor at Valdosta State University, where I continue to balance a career teaching, making art and administrating an art gallery. When I can, I travel to places as diverse as Escalante, Utah and Queensland, Australia, in search of new experiences and landscapes.