William Purinton Bomar

1919 - 1991

BiographyBomar was born in Fort Worth. He reportedly began painting at age seven after his interest had been sparked by his sitting for a portrait painted by Murray Bewley. Sallie Blythe Mummert taught the youthful Bomar to paint in oils and Joseph G. Bakos instructed him in watercolors in Santa Fe. Bomar attended the Cranbrook (Michigan) Art Academy (1940 - 1941) and studied the following year with John Sloan. Afterward Bomar received criticism from Amedee Ozenfant and instruction from Hans Hofmann. After regular summer stays in New Mexico since his youth, Bomar moved from New York City to Ranchos de Taos in 1972. He died in Clovis, New Mexico.

Bomar tends to dramatize what he sees, turning a grove of tall trees into a quiver of arrows shooting at the blue sky; letting pink houses in Taos all but lose themselves in a pinker sky, or turning a cloudscape over mountains into a giant scenic effect. In short, like Turner, a landscape for him is not a passive spectacle but an emotional force. At its best this is exhilarating work. (New York Times, January 2, 1955)

Everything extraneous is excluded from luminous, semi-abstract landscape paintings whose basic features - rocks, sky sea and cloud forms - appear to belong to a floating world. )New York Times, October 10, 1964)

Source: Texas Painters, Sculptors & Graphic Artists by John and Deborah Powers

Person TypeIndividual