Mary Bowles

Mary Phelan Bowles

Oct 6, 1927 - Jan 9, 2015

Mary Phelan Bowles passed away in her sleep with her family beside her at her home in Geyserville, CA. She was 87. Born and brought up in St. Louis, in 1945 she enrolled in Black Mountain College, a remarkable Fine & Liberal Arts college in North Carolina. When the curriculum presented content, the students were required to analyze, evaluate and expand it. Her experience there became a defining time of her life. She studied design and painting with Joseph Albers and Willem de Kooning at Black Mountain, painting with Richard Diebenkorn and Jack Jefferies at the San Francisco Art Institute and bronze sculpture with Farheed Moise at the College of Marin. In 1974 she was the Director of the Belvedere Adult Art School, where she taught sculpture as well. She became a renowned landscape painter. And, with Barbara Winkelstein, Flo Hauser an Ann Weinholt, she established a figure-painting studio off 3rdSt. in San Francisco. Her work has been presented in 21 shows and sold to 53 Corporate and private collectors. In 2013 Mary published a book, El Clarin, about her mother?s childhood on a Mexican coffee plantation, it?s loss in the Revolution of 1914 and her search for and rediscovery of it in 1991. In 2014 she published another book, Paintings & Sculpture, of her landscapes, water colors, figure paintings and sculpture. Mary Phelan Bowles was married for 17 years to Warren B. Outten with whom she had 3 children. They first lived in Chicago where she began a designer neck-tie business: the tie with square 1 ? ? ends and no taper, later copied by Ernst Ties with great success. She and her family moved to California in 1953 and lived in Sausalito and Tiburon. In 1965 she married Chester Bowles, Jr. and they have been together for 49 years. They lived in Tiburon and San Francisco and moved to Geyserville in 1998. She is survived by her husband Chester, her daughter Amanda Outten of Elk, Ca., her son Henry Outten of Fort Bragg and her daughter Suzanne Tipton of Piedmont as well as 4 step sons, 5 grand children, 3 great-grand children and 4 first cousins.