Frank Bowling was born in Esseqibo, Guyana in 1936. His was educated at the Slade school of Fine Arts in London, England, and the Royal Collage of Art, also in London. Bowling began painting in the 1950s as a figurative representational painter, although his present-day work is abstract. He has had extensive solo and group exhibitions all around the world. His first major exhibition was at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1969, when he was included in the “Whitney Annual: Contemporary American Painting”, followed by a solo show at the Whitney two years later. Bowling is also an accomplished writer and art critic, and the recipient of many awards including the Silver Medal from the Royal Collage of Art, which he received at the age of 25, and the Grand Prize for Contemporary Art at the First World Festival of Negro Art in Dakar, Senegal in 1966, as well as several John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship Grants and a Pollack Krasner Award. Bowling currently divides his time between New York City and London.