G. George Bowden (1954 – 2023) was a painter based in Haworth and who sold his expressionistic artworks at ‘Wuthering Arts’, a small shop on Haworth Main Street, that he and his wife, Sarah, opened in October 2016.
He wrote of his paintings:
The main aim of my painting is to explore a concept of bold colour and texture. This is, most often, predominantly in oil but may incorporate mixed media. For example, soft pastel to enhance colour and sand or grit to add texture. A broad range of tools are used – palette knives, scrapers, sponges, sticks, fingers and sometimes a brush!
George became a professional painter relatively late in his life and was largely self-taught. He was born in Gloucester but was brought up from the age of five at a National Children’s Home in Harrogate. In the 1970s he trained as a teacher and began teaching in special education, initially at Chipping Norton, but returned to Yorkshire in the early 1980s, where he taught in special schools in the region. These included the Lister Lane Special School, where he became deputy head. He later held headships at other special schools and in 2010 opened the Phoenix Special School in Keighley and worked as headteacher there until he took retirement in 2012. He was also a governor at Haworth Primary School for a number of years.
As an artist his subject range was broad, including land and town scenes, flowers, figures and trains. Although the townscape and countryside surrounding Haworth featured significantly in his work, George also painted scenes from his earlier travels to Madeira, Greece, Italy and France.
George’s work had been exhibited at Haworth, including at the Bronte School Rooms; also at Cliffe Castle Museum and Gallery, and at the Airedale Centre, Keighley, as part of an East Street Arts exhibition. It was also featured as part of a two-monthly exhibition of landscape art by local artists presented on the Bradford public Big Screen in Centenary Square during September and October 2017.
He was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2021 and lost his sight from the illness. In the last year of his life, he and his wife Sarah began a series of braille artworks, titled ‘Blind Truths’, that Sarah will complete in his honour. He died in a local Manorlands Hospice.
Wuthering Arts website: http://wutheringarts.co.uk/
