He attended the Royal College of Art in London, 1959–1962 alongside David Hockney, Pauline Boty, Allen Jones and Peter Phillips, receiving his M.F.A.
During his college years, his work was didactic, commenting on the space race, the all-powerful multinationals and the increasing Americanisation of English culture.
A pioneering program, Monitor's editors encouraged Russell to be ambitious and the resulting film can also be seen as a collaboration, taking inspiration from the formal aesthetics and themes within work of its artist-subjects.
Though he used the visual elements of pop art such as flags maps and comics, we can see in his early work a marked political concern, especially with current events and expansion of American power.
[10] Never one to allow his message to be governed by any particular medium, at the 1964 The New Generation show at the Whitechapel Gallery he exhibited large shaped canvases with vibrant areas of evenly applied colour.
[11] After 1966 he has used metal, coloured plastics, even neon light, the materials of the commercial sign maker, to create three-dimensional objects.
[9] During the early 1970s Boshier taught at Central School of Art and Design where one of his pupils was John Mellor (later known as Joe Strummer of The Clash).
This led to Boshier designing The Clash's second song book which included a collection of drawings and paintings released in conjunction with the album Give 'Em Enough Rope.
The Houston skyline and other impressions of the region, from cowboys to corporate business executives (suggestive of the oil industry or Texas Instruments Inc.), appeared in a number of his canvases from this period.
[16] Boshier lived in Los Angeles, U.S..[5] Social commentary had once more become a major element of his work tackling head on subjects that have strong political overtones such as gun control, police brutality and once again, the multinationals – this time on home turf.
Starting at the Royal College Boshier explored his fascination with the soft-power and hybrid marketing and cross-referencing of products, notably Special K cereal, as a means of diffusing and neutralizing American influence.
David Hockney, a close friend of Boshier's since 1957 when they met during their interview for the Royal College of Art, described, "He sends me things by ordinary mail that always have decorated envelopes...Sometimes it's a cutting from a newspaper (very old fashioned) or a drawing.