About
Bohuslav Barlow was born as Bohuslav Klos in Bruntal, a small peasant township in Upper Moravia, Czechoslovakia, in 1947, and never knew his father.
He was still a baby when the Iron Curtain descended and the family fled from Czechoslovakia, arriving in Furstenfeldbruck near Munich with scarcely any belongings. Soon his mother moved on to England to obtain work, leaving the young boy in the care of his grandparents.
He has two prevailing memories of those early years in Bavaria. One is looking up at the high baroque ceiling in Furstenfeldbruck Church while singing the Catholic chants, and admiring the glorious angels and fat-bottomed putti as they swirled around in a complex design of whites and golds.
The other memory is of his home in late summer, aflame with poppies and with a distant view of the Bavarian Alps far beyond.
You will search in vain for Catholic imagery in his mature work but the flowers are present, recurring in even his most recent pictures.
At this time in his life he neither painted nor drew.
At the age of eight, he was summoned to England to join his mother and stepfather – from whom he took the surname Barlow – in Blackpool.
It understandably took time to adjust and settle in England. This was made worse by the suspicion with which people from Germany were regarded so soon after the end of the second world war.
Add to all this, as John Avison wrote, “it was a comfortless, poverty-stricken childhood” and that over the young Bohuslav “hung the shadow of a violent stepfather and the drizzle of desperate circumstances”
But it was during these early years in England that he started to express himself through his art. His first picture was a view of the famous Blackpool Tower.
He progressed to copying a film poster of Cleopatra with the asp at her breast, and eventually moved on to better things – often linked to an imaginary world of which he told stories to his step siblings.
The discovery of his metier as an artist was slow and torturous.
His early pictures were done in pencil and coloured crayons on cheap paper – due to his family’s extreme poverty these were his only toys.
It was only when he reached the Manchester School of Art that he used oil paints for the first time.
From here, he went on to the Central School of Art in London, then in the grip of a particular form of abstract expressionism. He now regards this period in his life as somewhat fruitless. He became an art teacher, but just one year into this career he resolved to earn his living as a full time professional artist and this he has done ever since.
While he was still living in London, he went to Blackburn on his motorcycle, passing through Todmorden on the way.
He was struck by the wild, romantic scenery and felt that this was what he wanted to paint. And so he moved to Todmorden at the age of 26, and started to produce work which he still views with a great deal of satisfaction. He had finally found somewhere he felt at home.
This is where he still lives today with his wife and two children. He is known amongst his friends as Slavo.
To see Bohuslav’s most recent paintings go to his website at www.bohuslav.co.uk
