- Bob Booth wa born 30th September 1948 in Louth, Lincolnshire, England Teacher of Fine Art in Lancashire, England between 1975-1982
- Ordained Priest in the Church of England in 1983
- Moved to Western Australia in 1988
- Painting full-time since November 2003
- Agora Gallery Cottesloe 1995
- Margaret River Art Galleries Margaret River 1996 onwards
- Classic Gallery Rockingham 1998 solo
- Jersey Arts Centre Jersey, Channel Islands 1999 solo
- Falle Fine Art Jersey, Channel Islands 1999 onwards
- Moores Building Fremantle 2000 solo
- St. Michael’s Church Spearwood 2001 solo
- Archbishop’s 9 x 5 Perth 2001
- Galley in Cork Street Cork Street, London 2001 solo
- Windsor Castle Windsor, London 2003 solo
- Collins and Hastie Park Walk, London 2003 group
- Margaret River Art Galleries Margaret River 2004 solo
- Council of Europe Strasbourg, France September 2004
- Galerie Quedar Strasbourg, France September 2004
- Margaret River Galleries Margaret River June 2005
- Linton and Kay Perth May 2006
- The Harbour Gallery Jersey UK July 2006
Portrait of the Dean of Windsor (commissioned by the Canons of windsor)
Other privately commissioned portraits
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The Jersey Evening Post Jersey, Channel Islands June 1999
Artists and Illustrators London/InternationalNovember 2001
Insite homes antiques art Summer 05/06 ‘Face Value’ portraiture.
Artist Bob Booth has a painterly style and is best described as a figurative, gestural colourist. His considerable versatility is evident in his very varied choice of subject matter. Over the last five or six years, he has painted predominantly land and sea scapes, often featuring parrots and cows. More recently his work has included city scapes, portraiture, some still life and a few nudes. To-date, he uses oils more than acrylics and favours heavy application of thick-textured paint on the canvas.
“My aim has clarified to simply wanting to paint better. That is, to be more able to resist the temptations to see only what I saw previously, or what I expect or want to see; to be more trusting that the medium will exceed my best ideas or intentions, and to continue exploring the notion that risk is more creative than control” (Booth, 2004).
Bob Booth’s early years were spent in rural England. He grew up in the small market town of Louth with a love for the tranquility of the Lincolnshire countryside, its old red-brick buildings, apple blossom and rolling, shady pastures. He taught art in Lancashire for several years – although it offered little opportunity for producing his own work, it did provide him with a vital period of thinking and a better philosophical basis for his future development.
Whilst training for ordination as an Anglican priest, he became more aware of the significance of painting as an expression of spirituality. He produced a small number of explicitly religious pieces of work, largely dealing with the death of Christ as the paradoxical vulnerability of God. However, it was never his intention to work with exclusively religious motifs – he believed that Jesus assumed God was the meaning of everything: common or extraordinary. It was partly because of this that Roualt’s work represented something of an ideal for him, challenging the dichotomy between the religious and the secular. Bob also acknowledges influences of Cezanne, Morandi and Jackson Pollack in his work.
The following poem, written by Canon John White of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, is a reflection upon Bob’s “Half by Chance” exhibition at Windsor Castle, in 2003.
“Antipodean Prometheus”
Here,
In our water-colour world
Pastel and pale grey,
With pencil-lines of order
Through the colour-skin,
(Like veins beneath a powdered cheek)
You have torn the clouds,
Carrying stolen fire
From a distant bright Olympus
To give substance to our shadows
And burning to perception’s cage.
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