Lemongrass Blackpepper Bush (courtesy of the artist and ROLLO Contemporary Art)

With his recent flurry of exhibitions, Frank Bowling is taking London by storm. Having been inducted into the Royal Academy in 2005 and honoured with an OBE three years later, the artist has finally (officially) taken up his long overdue position amongst the upper echelon of the Academy's great British artists.

I had the pleasure of meeting Frank at his flat in Chelsea to discuss his recent exhibitions at Rollo Contemporary Art and the Royal Academy of Arts as well as his upcoming show at the V&A. We also talked about how he perceives himself as an artist and where he believes he fits between British and American art rhetoric. Lastly, he cleared up a few misconceptions that have been pinned on him and his work.

Frank's identity has always been grounded in British culture. Still a child, in 1947 he left his birthplace Guyana for "the mother country". Though he would ultimately flourish as an artist in New York, Frank never gave up his British roots having consistently maintained a flat in London whilst living abroad. Today, London is his primary residence but he continues to keep one foot on each side of the pond with a working studio - ideally located - in both cities. His studio in Brooklyn, New York is in the heart of DUMBO (down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass) a thriving artistic centre, providing him with an inspiring view of the infamous Brooklyn Bridge.

Frank's move to the United States in the mid-1960s, accompanied by David Hockney, was necessary in order to establish himself as an artist and as a result the influence of the New York School is the foundation of his style. During this time in New York, he was exposed to and inspired by the work of artists such as Robert Motherwell, Willem De Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Clifford Still and Mark Rothko. Based on Frank's early experiences as an emerging artist, I was particularly interested in his perspective regarding the differences between British and American art culture and how it has changed over the years.

When it comes to modern art, Britain's art scene notoriously lagged behind the US (and Europe) particularly during the 1950s and 1960s. In recent years, as the art world is becoming more globalised the tide does appear to have changed. Frank agrees and adds, "I have changed too. I left London because I was stifling and my work was more in tune to what was going on in New York." Despite the fact that the groundbreaking exhibition 'This is Tomorrow' titled after Richard Hamilton's famous collage, was a huge influence for Frank his work did not fit in within the British pop scene or contemporary art at the time. Not only did his work not fit in he confides, "I had no representation in London and was largely ignored and not really understood. I was stuck in a groove whereas the US enabled me to grow and change. The great thing about American art is that it moves along with tradition and as an artist I had to change with the time taking the tradition with me."

His recent show Crossings at Rollo Contemporary Art seems to "paint" a geographical chronology of the artist's life, reflecting a "mapping" technique that he describes as demonstrating "the ability to move in a direction that was clear to me that my work was developing into - a passage from beautiful youthful ambition that possesses you, to a rage against wrongdoing and suffering and finally the realisation that my work is not going to change the world." Frank's "mapping" represents his progression as an artist while reflecting the experiences that shaped his work. He describes his creative process as, "reaching for the sublime and ultimately by the time I worked through the maps, I knew where I was going. The influence of New York is strongly evident there and this notion of mapping has always been something that I felt aligned to."

Similarly, with Journeyings, his current show at the Royal Academy featuring works on paper, Frank says, "I'm concerned with the concept of modern man moving around all the time as it seems to match with my own life."

Although his work reflects an innovative style that is continuously evolving, understanding tradition has always been important to Frank. Once he realised that he wanted to become an artist he discovered that "the first task was to situate myself within a tradition. I wasn't looking to reinvent art. I knuckled down and tried to understand the traditions already in place... Jouneyings I think can be interpreted as my attempt to understand what I was being exposed to."

But Frank's professional existence between New York and London has led one scholar to coin the term "Transnationality" to describe the artist's position as an 'outsider' within the art world at large. However, Frank adamantly disagrees with this classification. His intention as an artist "is to stamp out clearly the fact that I am a British person and the tradition to which I belong is the western tradition. I have to look at and understand and situate myself within that tradition."

He continues, "Being a black person in England [circa 1968] was something that was forced upon me and the racial situation was dire. There was lots of prejudice but I have always been sure of my [British] identity and that may have caused some confusion." For Frank, working in New York may have defined his artistic style but it did not define his identity as a person. He never set out to become an American artist.

These days Franks is best known for his dedication to abstraction but in his upcoming exhibition at the V&A, one of his earlier figurative paintings, Mirror will be on display. For Frank Mirror was "an attempt to understand the geometry of space and I am still very much involved with structuring and colour balance."

The showing at the V&A could not be more appropriate as the spiral staircase in the painting is modelled after the building's architecture. In the past, the stairs lead to the Royal College of Art which for Frank symbolically represented the way in which students would ascend and descend in the [artistic] community. In this painting, the artist "tried to show where my head was, what I was studying as well as my domestic situation." In this context, Frank hopes that the connection to the V&A will be clearer. He happily declares, "I couldn't have asked for anything more than having it displayed there."

Alas, contrary to art historical speculation, the spiral staircase in Mirror bears no connection to Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase. The painting depicts the artist's former wife at the top of the staircase and two self portraits, one in which the artist is depicted falling from the staircase and the other depicting him standing at the bottom. In his own words, it is a "self-portrait of a hysterical suicidal artist flinging himself off the stairs as it were while the real me is stepping onto the floor." In his attempt to understand the complex geometry of the spiral, he was mirroring the complexities in his own life.

He admits that he was not familiar with the work of Duchamp until he was urged by Clement Greenberg to go and see his work in New York. "The great thing about Clem", Frank says, "is that we had discussions about things I didn't know and he would steer me where I needed to go [to see work] and then if I doubted him, I could come back and challenge him."

Frank is humbled by his success, especially when his work is compared with the great American Abstract Expressionists but make no bones about it, he is a British abstract expressionist and now thanks to his Royal Academy induction his place within the British art community is secure.