My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or chilled, master or servant derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all.

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Australian Richard Bosman approaches the subject of American History as a tourist in a series of paintings that take a folkloric approach to American icons. He paints the replica of the cabin that is located in the Walden Pond parking lot. The cabin is painted in a deceivingly straightforward deadpan style with Bosman’s characteristic loose brushwork. It authoritatively represents “the” cabin, although in actual fact, this replica is across the street from the pond and about a half a mile from the original cabin location. The emblematic impact of the cabin can be seen in a quick internet search on “Thoreau’s Cabin” that brings up numerous contemporary accounts of visits to the Walden site, as well as facsimiles that people have created on their own property. Thoreau’s Cabin is part of a series of paintings exploring the re-created workspaces of artists and writers. The idea to paint modern-day representations of spaces associated with tremendous creativity began with a visit to Eduard Munch’s country cabin in Norway and a close examination of Rembrandt’s exotic collection of objects displayed in Amsterdam. Bosman has also painted Herman Melville’s desk and library, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s study.

Richard Bosman’s work has been exhibited internationally with recent solo exhibitions at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, NY and Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston, MA. Known for both painting and printmaking, his work has been featured in exhibitions such as Close to the Surface – The Expressionist Prints of Eduard Munch and Richard Bosman at the Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA; Contemporary Painting curated by Alex Katz at Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; and Beyond the Mountain, Contemporary Landscapes, Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA. He created 35 woodblock prints for Captivity Narrative of Hannah Duston produced by Arion Press with narratives by Cotton Mather, John Greenleaf Whittier, Hawthorne and Thoreau. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship and his work is in numerous public and private collections. He studied at The Bryam Shaw School of Painting and Drawing, London, England; The New York Studio School, New York, NY; and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME.

For more information: www.rbosman.com