About
Drawer • Sculptor • Painter • Educator
Alexandra Carus Bowker is a British fine artist, designer, and creative educator based between London and her home county of Lancashire.
She 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.
Carus Bowker’s 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.
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My practice is rooted in a commitment to observing and interpreting the natural world and human interaction within it. Through drawing, painting, and sculpture, I explore how fluid forms and abstracted details can express both sensory and emotional connections to the environment.
Drawing operates as a structural and generative system within my practice, through which work is conceived, tested, and realised across surface, space, and material, where relationships between form, structure, and spatial organisation are constructed and reorganised. Working with traditional techniques as active tools within a contemporary context, I focus on tonal values, light, and spatial relationships to create compositions which challenge static representation and extend into material and dimensional form.
At the heart of my work is a sustained enquiry into the tensions between our ancestral ties to the land and the ways in which modern society has become desensitised to nature’s rhythms. In examining this evolving relationship, my practice considers habitat as both a cultivated necessity and a repository of personal and collective memory. I am drawn to the spaces which emerge between humans and their environments, where fleeting moments of presence leave an imprint. My work reflects the tension between human form and natural rhythms, weaving observation, recollection, and imagination to create intentional and unintentional narratives which shift between clarity and ambiguity.
An ongoing engagement with the figure underpins my understanding of structure. Working from observation, the body is approached as a site of organisation, where weight, transition, and turning points are tested through line and form. Modelling extends this enquiry into three dimensions, where material is built, compressed, and reconfigured. Although the figure is not always explicitly present in the final outcome, it remains intrinsic to how form, gesture, and structure are developed 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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RECENT
Moment in Time | City & Guilds of London Art School
2025
FAKE – How true is Reality? | 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, Notting Dale, 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
Lancashire | Samlesbury Hall, Preston
Landgate Create | Turnpike Gallery
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Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School Blackburn — Artsmark Platinum Award, Arts Council England | Teacher of Fine Art & Design Technology; Gold Arts Award Advisor; Head of House
City & Guilds of London Art School | Skillshare Workshop Artist
Victoria & Albert Museum | V&A Innovate Project Development Team
Drawing Studio 23 — Royal Drawing School Graduate Collective | Design, Promotion and Curatorial Teams
Draw Clitheroe | Freelance Artist
Manchester Art Gallery | Workshop Artist and Learning Invigilator
The Couture Collective — Manchester Art Gallery | Discussion Leader
National Trust at Manchester Art Gallery | Lost Gardens of Manchester — Exhibition Gardener and Invigilator
Children’s University with Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery, The Whitaker, Rossendale Museum & Art Gallery and Towneley Hall Art Gallery & Museum | Workshop Artist
Spring into Action | Spring into Art — SEN Youth Workshop Artist
Action Factory Community Arts Blackburn, Lancashire | Workshop Artist, including for: 'Landgate Create' Turnpike Gallery; Blackburn Festival; Community Arts Facilitator; STUN Roadshow
NOISEFestival: NOISELab, Manchester | Exhibition and Event Assistant
Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery | Workshop Artist; Arts Assistant