Sketch of an Artist – Dinah Bowman 

            A fish print – almost perfect, so distinct, such detail. The Japanese call it “gyotaku.” Technically, it’s a relief monoprint. Dinah Bowman calls it a fish rubbing. Whatever you call it, this type of art is the mainstay of Dinah Bowman’s business.

            And how is business these days? Well frankly, things are great, Bowman says. You have seen her work everywhere - from Navy ships in ports all over the world to the Port Aransas Chamber of Commerce. Dinah Bowman is known for her water colors, scratch boards and rubbings of Texas marine life. She has won numerous awards for her art and her list of regular customers reads like a Who’s Who in Commercial Art. Yet despite the awards and big contracts, Bowman also is also very proud of her smaller jobs, like a print of a child’s first fish or someone’s state record catch. Or perhaps it is that water color that matches a bedspread in a customer’s bedroom. Her pieces range from a small, framed print for $50 up to $7,000. No job is too big or too small as long as the piece gives Bowman a sense of pride and the owner a sense of pleasure.

            And who wouldn’t take pleasure in owning some of Bowman’s work? Take her fish rubbings, for example, Dinah’s specialty. “Most people when they come in the gallery and see the fish rubbings, when I first describe how it’s done, they think I’m pulling their leg. After it sinks in, they say, ‘Wow! This is super!’” When doing a fish rubbing, Dinah uses what nature provides. She takes a real fish, washes it, dries it and paints it with ink. She then lays the fish on paper or cloth and massages it. When done, she adds the eye, some shadows and maybe a little detailing. The fish, however, does the rest. While the technique may sound a bit messy and primitive, the end result is fabulous.

            These fish rubbings are wildly popular. Bowman does a lot of stringers, or what she calls her “Bay Grand Slam,” typically a trout, redfish and flounder. She has done some rubbings of a state record 14 ½ foot blue marling, weighing over 700 pounds, and a record blue fin tuna. She also does rubbings of shells and other plant and marine life.

            While her rubbings are great, Bowman is by no means a one-dimensional artist. Her scratch boards and water colors are also beautiful. The first Scratch boards she did for the Texas General Land Office, entitled “Texas Wetlands”, won an international award for best educational poster. Which then led to a second commission for “Texas Dunes.” Dinah is currently working on a proposal for a third piece for them, “Texas Submerged Lands.” The scratch boards are my favorite – authentic, realistic and perfect in every detail. They also take an incredible amount of time to complete. Several months go into the planning and sketching, another month or so for actually “scratching” out the design. A scratch board is a piece of cardboard coated with a smooth plaster, usually black. Bowman then scratches and scrapes in the texture and tints, sometimes with colored pencils. She has done three such works for the Navy and is researching a fourth piece, “Search and Discovery.”

            Her water color prints are also special. She has done many underwater scenes, posters and other commercial projects. Her poster done for the City of Port Aransas has led to a contract to illustrate cranes in Wisconsin this month. She is also working on some 60 to 100 illustrations for a book for the Corpus Christi National Estuary Program.

            It is for these commercial works that Bowman has taken some criticism from the art community. Many dismiss her as strictly a “commercial artist,” a title Dinah makes no apologies for. “I’m creating,” she says. “yes, I do some things that are semi-mass produced…But that affords me the luxury of doing things I want to do. It’s a tradeoff – a positive tradeoff in terms of my creativity.”

            Despite her successes – commercial and personal – there was a time when Bowman doubted her ability to make it as an artist. “I denied thinking about it as a profession. I just didn’t feel it was realistic,” she says. So she went to college and majored in something that assured her a real job, marine biology with a minor in chemistry, and graduated from the University of Corpus Christi. Then she went to the Marine Science Institute. It was during this time that she did some freelance work – “Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico and Adjacent Waters” – published by Texas A&M Press. And the rest, as they say, is history. “This proved that I had the discipline and continuity of my work to reconsider my career,” says Bowman. She went back to college, this time a double major in terrestrial biology and art at Texas A&I. No wonder her work is so authentic – she knows her subject matter like the back of her hand. Fish, and their surroundings, are Dinah’s thing. They are also her love, her training and her life’s work.

            Bowman opened her gallery in Portland in 1979. She owes her start in the business to a woman in South Padre who got her on her doing decorating. T o hear Dinah tell it, “She gave me a lot of work and I became instantly solvent.” No small feat for an artist just starting out. And decorating is something she still enjoys and takes great pride in. As she says, “I’m dependable, and I provide good quality work for the right price.”

            Some works Bowman is most proud of is her first commission for the Navy on marine conservation. This piece has been copied by two other countries, an enormous compliment to her talent. She is also fond of a 6 x 90 foot mural she donated to a girls’ school in Belize. An award she treasures was being named Artist of the Year by the YWCA in 1986. Her only regret is that she did not keep a visual record of the thousands of pieces she has done over the years. She gives an example in a story about a piece that came into her gallery for some new glass. She really liked it and thought, “I can do that.” As she looked closer, she saw her name on it. She had completely forgotten this one.

            Dinah spends her time creating, diving, managing her gallery and being a mom to teenage daughter, Coral. Although her daughter has artistic talent, she plans to be a veterinarian and will be attending Texas A&M soon. You can see Bowman’s work at the Dinah Bowman Gallery in Portland or at various galleries and shops – Texas State Aquarium, Gary Osborne Fine Art Gallery in Port Aransas, and the Monty Wade Gallery in San Antonio. Her stuff is also at Speedy’s Picture Framing in Houston, The Sundial in Rockport, Cactus Flower in South Padre Island and the Cathedral Arty Gallery in Gulf Shores, Alabama.