About Robert Stephen Barlow

Born in 1973 I am a Tamworth based artist who, using digital photography, on site sketches and various internet sources, travels the length and breadth of the U.K to record images of the various themes within my work.

I generate large oil paintings around a core theme depicting urban landscapes of the twenty first century. Regenerating sky lines of cranes, building sites and post industrial wastelands, are features in my work.

In 1993, prior to what I see as the recent onset of accelerated regeneration of U.K cities, I completed a ‘Foundation’ course in art and design, at Stafford College and at Bradford College in 1996, I gained a BA Hon’s in art and design, specializing in Painting and Printmaking.

Upon graduating, my work was chosen to be exhibited in the ‘Northern Graduates Exhibition’ at the ‘Royal College’ in London, during which I sold several paintings.

In 1998 after completing a Masters Degree in Fine Art Print-making, specializing in the mediums of lino, woodblock, dry point and CAD ‘photo-shop’, I returned to the Midlands, where I abandoned Fine Art and opened up to other themes, including portraits, commissioned amateur theater sets and imaginative ‘Space Art’, futuristic scenes of fictional buildings, vehicles, wasteland and landscapes with futuristic backdrops. A creative domain, familiarly known as ‘Concept Art’.

Around 2008 I was re-awoken to return to my core theme. I saw once again post industrial landscapes, abandoned ruins, collieries, quarries and dockyards, but this time all had been disappearing rapidly to the clearing and regenerative processes of the early 21st century. They were literally being ‘scraped’ off the urban landscape.

I remembered that when I attended my foundation course at Stafford College, I commuted by train, through Birmingham’s inner city and industrialized areas. My eyes were opened to the rich and interesting tapestry, with its mile after mile expanses of concrete, flyovers, electric pylons, stockyards, gas ohmmeters, abandoned power stations, factories, scrap yards and industrial canals, all of which gave inspiration to a new and visually rewarding artistic journey.

I realised that I was revisiting my passion, but felt threatened by the disappearance of this heritage. I felt compelled to record this rapidly disappearing and changing world by photographing as much as I could, then translating it into large and virile compositions, that record the images of change. They record and visually interpret the before, during and after.