Bob Law Biography

Bob Law was born in 1934 in Brentford, Middlesex. The only formal art training he received was as a child when his grandmother taught him watercolour painting. When he was fifteen Law was apprenticed to an architectural designer. The experience taught him to do building work and carpentry.

In 1957 Law moved to St. Ives. He was inspired by the artistic energy of St. Ives and began to teach himself how to paint. He was encouraged by many in the community, but especially by the artist Peter Lanyon and the art critic Lawrence Alloway. While living in St. Ives Law made the first of his Field Drawings, which are minimalist and almost childlike drawings that respond to the experience of lying in a field. Law remembers: “I used to go out in the fields and lay down and watch…the clouds race across and feel the earth spinning, feel the wind, watch the trees…I don’t like fussy paintings and people that work laboriously. I like strong simple statements.” He also made the first of his Black Paintings while in St. Ives. These were done in thick acrylic paint. All have been lost or destroyed.

Law moved from St. Ives to London in 1960. That same year Law was featured in his first exhibition, Two Young British Painters with Peter Hobbs at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Roland Penrose was an early champion of Law’s. The next year brought him his first solo show at the Grabowski Gallery, also in London. Since these two important shows, Law has been well exhibited in Britain, Europe, and the U.S.
In 1961 Law began to develop his Field Drawings into a series of Metaphysical Field Paintings, which appear to incorporate philosophy, psychology, paleontology, poetry and alchemy. It is evident in these works that Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman were important influences on Law at this time. A few years later he revisited the Black Paintings series. These works appear to be almost monochrome blankets of black, but they are in fact composed with layers of colour including blue and purple. They are his most celebrated minimalist expressions and were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford in 1974.

In 1980 Law began experimenting and focusing mainly on sculpture. Law says this interest in sculpture developed from sitting in a chair: “I used to sit and look at my Black Paintings for hour after hour and meditate on them and one day I got in such a state - and I thought the painting is here and I’m sitting in this chair and I’d like to make this whole thing - I’d like to make the thing I’m sitting in - a chair- as a contemplative object.” The Last Supper, Gauguin’s Chair, and Judas Driftwood Chair, all feature chairs and confirm the importance of this initial moment of inspiration.

In the 1970s and early 1980s he was represented by Lisson Gallery in London, and he featured in the Tate Gallery’s major retrospective British Artists of the Sixties. The year after the Tate exhibition, a retrospective of his own work was mounted at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. He was given a major retrospective at the Newlyn Gallery in Cornwall in 1999, to which he had returned in 1997. Law died in Penzance in 2004.