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Ships & Shoes & Snow Goggles

Ships & Shoes & Snow Goggles

Polar history inspires paintings and sketches by Vincent Alexander Booth

12 January - 15 March 2008
See: Opening times for the exhibition and the Museum

Vincent Booth exhibition poster

Born in Gorton, Manchester on 26 August 1963, Vincent Alexander Booth began drawing as a boy and quickly discovered a fondness for sketching ships. Whilst at school he would go in to the library and draw every vessel he could find and before long had amassed over eight hundred different drawings, all on small pieces of paper. He was immediately attracted to the great Age of Sail sea battles of Admiral Nelson and the graceful lines of clipper ships, which then led on to more recent maritime history, particularly warships of the twentieth century.

Booth's first major public exhibition was in Manchester, and he has since showed his canvases and ceramics at the Royal Society of Marine Artists, Mall Galleries, London, and in Laignes, France. He continues to enjoy exhibiting in his home town of Stockport. His paintings can also be found in private collections the world over; in Geneva, Nairobi, Boston, Whitby, Iona, and the Highlands.

When not at the canvas, Booth enjoys fell and marathon running, collecting books, and traveling. He hopes very soon to journey to the polar regions, to follow in the footsteps of those expeditions which continue to inspire his work. A number of the works on display here were painted in residence at SPRI. Over the course of this exhibition Booth will produce a series of pen and ink sketches and oils on canvas featuring historical subjects and treasured objects from the museum's polar collections.