Tobit Roche: Recent Paintings

About

‘“I’m held spellbound by nature - sky, light, weather, water, darkness, shadows, clouds,” Tobit Roche once observed of himself and it is the elusive search to try and move others to feel the same that lies at the heart of his intensely contemplative and tenderly poetic paintings of the landscape.’ Nicholas Usherwood, Galleries Magazine.

Tobit’s work can be roughly divided into two groups; working directly from nature en plein air and imaginary or recalled landscapes done in the studio.   The acute observations of the former provide material for the larger paintings which are worked on in the studio, from memory and imagination.  Using glazes and scumbles, the paint is manipulated with the hands as well as the brush.  His most recent work has taken this process further than before. The large paintings have become more abstracted with stronger colours are there are hints of figures there. 

Born in Manchester in 1954, Tobit grew up in Hong Kong, Canada and India.  He attended the Ontario College of Art from 1974-6, where he came into contact with the wonderful early C20th Canadian painters Tom Thomson and ‘The Group of Seven’, and Camberwell from 1977-80.  Tobit then spent a year working alongside Duncan Grant at Charleston.  Tobit exhibits regularly in London, New York and India.