Frank Bowling: ‘Guiltiest pleasure? Sixteen-year-old whisky. My doctor says I shouldn’t’

The artist on his need for order, an embarrassing Christmas costume, and the people he hopes to meet in heaven Born in British Guiana (now Guyana), Frank Bowling, 92, moved to the UK aged 19 and did national service in the RAF. In 1962, he graduated from the Royal College of Art with the silver medal for painting. He moved to New York in 1966, where he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, and exhibited his “map paintings” at the Whitney Museum in 1971. In 2005, he became the first black artist to be elected a Royal Academician, and Tate Britain staged a retrospective in 2019. His exhibition, Seeking the Sublime, is at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until January 2027. He lives in London with his wife. When were you happiest? Recently, as people began to understand what I am trying to do in my painting. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? The boozing. I started on rum as a child. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Trying to exercise authority over one. What was your most embarrassing moment? In the 1950s I went to the Chelsea Arts Club’s New Year’s Eve ball at the Royal Albert Hall dressed as a Christmas pudding, with swimming trunks under my cost