Born: November 22nd, 1945
Died: February 1st, 2026
Christine Bowen, who has died aged 80, was an artist whose use of vibrant colours and naturalistic themes won her many admirers throughout Ireland. She had a pronounced zest for life and a creative energy that found expression through her art.
A free spirit and passionate, her intense personality and enthusiasm for art inspired others.
For many years, she owned and ran her own gallery in Kenmare, Co Kerry, but she exhibited extensively, in Ireland and internationally, and sold well. Exhibitions included at the Royal Ulster Academy, galleries in France, Croatia and Malta, and solo exhibitions in Bath, Belfast and Dublin.
She received numerous commissions, including from the Royal Irish Academy.
READ MORE
Her work can be found among the public collections of several State or semi-State bodies, including the Department of the Environment of Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Electricity, Ulster Television, Allied Irish Banks, the Office of Public Works and the Department of the Taoiseach. Commissioned works also grace the Europa Hotel in Belfast and Sheen Falls Lodge in her adopted Co Kerry.
She was heavily influenced by childhood memories from Africa and the scenery around Kenmare, where she lived for many years.
Dr Frances Ruane, honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, critiqued her work in 2013 as having a style that is “immediately recognisable – a unique and original voice”.
“What sets her apart from so many other artists who are drawn to this area is her resistance to cliche,” she wrote. “She avoids the panoramic landscape, preferring to distil a ‘sense of place’ by focusing on more intimate subjects – a swarm of bees, a stray sheep, the glimmer of fish below the surface of the water, treating these with refreshing originality.”
Christine Bowen was born in Cheshire, in England. l. Her father, Clifford Bowen, was a former soldier who worked as a customs official for Elder Dempster, at the time one of the UK’s largest shipping companies and which specialised in trade between Liverpool and west Africa. Her mother was Claire Hughes, who grew up in Eaton Square, Rathgar.
As a consequence of her father being posted to Lagos and Port Harcourt in Nigeria, Christine spent almost all of the first seven years of her life in west Africa, with holiday breaksin the African tropics or Dublin. Her early years in west Africa, where she was surrounded by tropical nature’s vivid colours and exotic wildlife (including a pet baboon named Nasser) and witness to glamorous parties, had a big impact on her future life and art.
This somewhat expatriate, postcolonial lifestyle saw her dispatched aged seven back to England where she attended Upton Hall, a Catholic grammar school for girls in Birkenhead run by the Faithful Companions of Jesus order, of which she had fond memories.
She found the nuns to be “kind and interesting people, who encouraged creativity in their students”, according to her daughter, Caroline Davin-Power. “She just loved the nuns. She died her hair purple when she was a teenager and they didn’t bat an eyelid.”
After Upton, she spent some time in London but more significantly was sent to finishing school in France where, according to family lore, her main achievements were discovering French men and cigarettes, both of which she liked.
When her parents returned to Ireland, Christine came too – they to Sligo (where they ran a pub) and she, eventually, to Dublin. Her first significant employment was as a colour consultant to paint manufacturer Harrington and Goodlass Wall (HGW), helping to select complementary colours for large commercial spaces and churches.
She was responsible for the huge oil storage tanks in Cobh harbour being repainted in pastel shades, as opposed to the traditional dark silver, which was controversial at the time. Another major client was the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum.
Around 1977, she met the journalist David Davin-Power, then on the cusp of a successful broadcasting career with RTÉ. They married and had three children – a son, Nicholas, and two daughters, Caroline and Julia-Daisy. However, they separated in the 1980s and Bowen returned to Sligo with the children.
There, she devoted herself to her art and attended Sligo Regional Technical College as a mature student, studying fine art under the tutelage of Seán McSweeney and Nuala Maloney. When Davin-Power was posted to Belfast in the early 1990s, Bowen moved there too, living separately but sufficiently near for the children to know both their parents.
In Belfast she completed a BA degree in art from the University of Ulster.
Once they were reared and off to college, Bowen returned to the west of Ireland – to Ballindine in Mayo and then to Kenmare, where she settled for about 18 years. She lived in a cottage and opened a gallery on Main Street.
As her reputation grew, so too did commissions – a notable one locally for Sheen Falls Lodge, where a large reception-area mural depicts local fauna and other works by her were displayed throughout the hotel. Because of its international clientele, and guided tours and talks she gave, sales of her work increased, notably to guests from the United States.
In a condolence posted on RIP.ie, the hotel said Bowen’s “creative and free-spirited approach brought such delight to every project and interaction. She had a rare gift for inspiring those around her, and her presence made everything we did together more meaningful.”
Other collaborations included illustrations for Maura O’Connell Foley’s book, My Wild Atlantic Kitchen: Recipes and Recollections, and several front covers for George Ogden’s Knowth excavation series published by the Royal Irish Academy.
Foreign trips included Spain, Croatia (where bullet holes in the walls of Dubrovnik served as inspiration), Rwanda, and Kenya, where her brother Michael lived.
The inspiration of the tropics – fish, flora and vivid colours – is evident in her many paintings.
Frances Ruane said Bowen’s art displayed “a sense of immediacy, of spontaneity, often with traces of the original drawing still visible”.
“She doesn’t work a painting to death, which is rarer than you might think. For example, her hares still have life in them, often captured in a few simple linear gestures. She might add some body colour to drawings but feels no compulsion to fill in every space. Bowen has a real feel for paint and manages to orchestrate a range of textures in a single painting.”
Bowen lived life at full tilt. “She was quite outrageous, great fun but was also incredibly kind, empathetic and exuded humanity,” says Caroline Davin-Power. “She was anti-establishment and she hated the government, but she had boundless compassion for society’s vulnerable who she did not think were sufficiently protected by the State. She was basically an anarchist.”
Bowen and David Davin-Power, who was happily married for a second time, were reconciled as friends in their later years. “Friendship and affection returned,” says Caroline, “and joint holidays happened.”
Her other daughter Julia-Daisy recalled at her mother’s funeral a woman who “took the road less travelled – and while there may have been easier and more populated paths, she was fearless in her pursuit of truth and justice”.
Christine Bowen was predeceased in 2024 by her former husband David Davin-Power but is survived by their children Nick, Caroline and Julia-Daisy, her brother Michael, her daughter-in-law Edel, sons-in-law Brian and Michael, and grandchildren Oisín, Rossa, Rógie, Vincent, Margot and Frederick, nieces Jessica and Alisa and nephews Adam, Charlie and Manus.
