Biography
Born in Cheshire in 1912, Bob Crossley was to spend much of his childhood and formative adult years living in Rochdale, to the north east of Manchester. Leaving school aged 14, Bob trained as a sign writer before entering the RAF during the second world war. Upon demobilisation he attended drawing classes and joined the Rochdale Art Society and was accepted into the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, building on his apparent skill and success with his first London solo exhibition at the Reid Gallery in 1960. Additionally, Bob was to exhibit with The London Group and the Paris Salon. Bob further exhibited in London and Madrid, with a major retrospective in both his hometown of Rochdale and latterly St. Ives.
Drawn to the artist community of St. Ives, Bob was to move to Cornwall in 1959, joining the famous Penwith Society of Arts the following year. Initially an artist focusing on figurative works firmly as part of a post-war modernism in painting, Bob was to become well known in latter years as an energetic abstract artist, influenced no doubt by his friend Terry Frost.
Bob sadly died in 2010, still having been actively painting until the year before his death.
