Dive In, the Water Is Fine (Art)!

Nothing like a summer swim to cool the season's heat. Leap right in with this work by Richard Bosman.

Richard Bosman's color woodblock print The Diver is a classic example of the artist's continuing fascination with the relationship of humans to the sea, inspired perhaps by the stories and adventures of his sea-captain father.

The artist first came to critical attention in the early 1980s with a series of paintings that captured the dynamics and fluidity of the ocean in expressive gestures, which marked him as a member of the Neo-Expressionist movement.

At the same time, Bosman became involved in printmaking, producing woodcuts that had what he termed a "handmade quality" quite different from the silkscreens, lithographs, and etchings then in vogue. In time, however, he expanded his techniques to include other methods of printmaking that could effectively duplicate the fluidity of his painted imagery.

"I'm always eager to work on prints after a sustained period of making paintings in my studio," Bosman has stated. "The painting is such a solitary process that the collaborative aspect of working with a printer is as much an attraction for me as the immediacy and demands of the printmaking."

Source: National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996).

Pictured: Richard Bosman, born 1944 India, The Diver, 1981, oil, 48 x 24 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through funds provided by Awards in the Visual Arts Program.