Some time in the late 70s my great-Aunt Zilpha, now deceased but then living in the tiny upstate New York community of Oxford, gave me a softcover book entitled Franck Taylor Bowers 1875-1932. The cover of the book, a photographic self-portrait of the artist, is the main photo source for my image. Thank Goodness his first name had its peculiar spelling. It makes him a perfect triple acrostic.

Franck was no N.C. Wyeth, but he was good enough for Binghamton, New York, where a retrospective of his work was displayed in 1977, becoming the basis for the book Aunt Zilpha gave me. An Internet search reveals that his father, LaMont Bowers, a financial advisor for John D. Rockefeller, Jr., may have had something to do with the Ludlow Massacre, a shameful episode in the history of American labor relations. Tsk tsk on him if so, and tsk tsk on him for saddling Franck with family business obligations (anchors and other ancillaries) when Franck could have been painting his way to greatness. Instead, eight years of his life was misspent on anchors and invoices.

Franck died of aplastic anemia four days after his 57th birthday, so I have outlived him by two years and counting. He did some nice drawings and paintings, some of which are findable via Internet search. It would make my day if someone reading this honored his memory by checking out some of his images.

The words:

FLAWLESS execution with a pen or pencil nub
Raw sienna add cerulean to brush or rub–go
Anywhichway & pursue your muse w/ebb & flow
Nobody sincere is selling you a line to toe
Continental voyages took dilettante to doer
Kept an artist-voyager alive and new toujours