About
Drawer • Sculptor • Painter • Educator
Alexandra Carus Bowker is a British fine artist, based between London and her home county of Lancashire.
Rooted in observational drawing, her practice is materially-driven, investigating the tension between structure and fluidity through processes of casting, fragmentation, and layering, where natural forms are not simply recorded but destabilised, producing a dialogue between verticality, habitat, and temporal residue.
Carus Bowker is currently studying for an MA in Fine Art at City and Guilds of London Art School, having previously undertook postgraduate study in figurative sculpture and drawing at the Heatherley School of Fine Art and the Royal Drawing School, where she completed the Drawing Development Year. She holds a PGCE in Design from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has worked with museums and galleries as an arts facilitator and educator, including Manchester Art Gallery, and as part of the V&A Innovate Project Development Team.
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My practice balances careful observation with an intuitive and responsive exploration of material. I am interested in how images are formed through the weight, spacing, and pressure of a mark, whether dry, painterly, or sculptural, and in the fluidity created as these shift between one another.
Drawing operates as both a structural and generative system within my practice, shaping how form, space, and materiality are tested and reworked across drawing, painting, and sculpture. Long-term engagement with life drawing continues to inform how I approach weight, structure, and material responsiveness across media. I use traditional techniques as active tools rather than fixed methods, working through tonal value, light, and spatial relationships to move beyond static representation towards more spatial and dimensional forms.
My work explores the relationship between people and the land, examining the tension between an inherited connection to place and the distance shaped by contemporary life. Rooted in memories of walking the moors and woods near my childhood home, shifting seasons, textures, and traces within the landscape became both subject and collaborator. Observation, recollection, and imagination are used to navigate the pull between human form and natural rhythms, creating narratives which shift between clarity and ambiguity. This enquiry extends into the materials themselves, where pigments, clays, and other worked forms carry physical histories and traces of transformation, extraction, and human intervention.
The figure remains central to my understanding of structure. Working from observation, I explore weight, transition, and points of change through line and form, extending this into sculpture where matter is modelled, disrupted, and reconfigured. Even where the figure is submerged, it continues to underpin the development of form, gesture, and spatial relationships across my practice.
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City & Guilds of London Art School | MA Fine Art
The Heatherley School of Fine Art | Postgraduate Diploma in Figurative Sculpture & Lifedrawing
The Royal Drawing School | The Drawing Development Year
Goldsmiths College | PGCE Design x Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood Enrichment Placement
Lancaster University - ELIHE | BA Hons Fine Art Integrated Media
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UPCOMING
Drawing Residency | Dumfries House x Royal Drawing School
MA Show | City & Guilds of London Art School
RECENT
Moment in Time | City & Guilds of London Art School
2025
FAKE – Wie wahr ist die Wirklichkeit? | Konvikt Haus der Kultur, Prüm, Germany
How The light Gets In | The Marylebone Gallery, London
MA Interim Show | City and Guilds of London Art School
2024
Diploma Graduates' Exhibition | The Heatherley School of Fine Art
Interim Show | The Heatherley School of Fine Art
Beyond Drawing | Royal Drawing School at Breakers Gallery, London
2023
Fragments of Life | Brompton Chapel Gallery, London
Interim Show | The Heatherley School of Fine Art
Gyllian Foster Prize for Drawing
Diploma Graduates' Exhibition | The Heatherley School of Fine Art
2022 & PREVIOUS
Clitheroe Contemporary | Holmes Mill, Clitheroe
Art Open | Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery
60 Years of Wildness! | Lancashire Wildlife Trust, Brockholes Nature Reserve
Lancashire | Samlesbury Hall, Preston
Landgate Create | Turnpike Gallery, Leigh