Bob Batchelor

Bob Batchelor was born and brought up in Georgetown, Guyana. He was the son of a Guyanese mother and a Scottish father. He came to Scotland in 1946, aged 18, to study Drawing and Painting at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, and apart from a brief return to Georgetown, he lived in North East Scotland for the rest of his life.

His early work was mainly portraits and landscapes but he was a passionate gardener and he later began painting flowers in his garden – an amazing, chaotic space which he filled with his favourite bearded irises, roses, oriental poppies, peonies and camellias. His love of the form and colour of flowers shines through his work. As well as paintings, he produced many screenprints and was a founding member of Peacock Printmakers in Aberdeen. Many of Bob’s floral works transport the viewer into an exotic world, both expressing his interest in nature and botany and creating lively compositions focussing on colour and pattern. The effects of a tropical childhood are obvious in his vibrant prints, yet are muted in places, perhaps tempered by the northern climate.

Artist biography by Grampian Hospitals Art Trust, 2023.