About Bob Haberfield

About Bob Haberfield.

Bob Haberfield was an exceptional, naturally gifted, creative talent. He had an artistic flair that is rarely found, and he quickly mastered whatever he turned his hand to.

Bob was born in 1938 in Sydney Australia into a musical family who would spend their evenings sitting around the piano singing songs. Music was Bob’s first love, and he always had it playing loudly in his art studio while he worked. At an early age Bob was a gifted singer and his mum would ask him to perform for her friends which he used to do standing outside the living room window because he was too shy to sing in front of them. It wasn’t long before he overcame his nerves and got a job performing in a dance hall on the weekends.

Bob also had a natural ability at drawing and painting, and was mentored by the renowned Australian artist Clifton Pugh while working at the same time in a graphic design studio. He also took up the flamenco guitar. Bob quickly outshone all his creative teachers, becoming one of the best flamenco guitarists in Australia at the time, and a very promising fine art painter, while making a good living as a graphic artist. But he started to feel pressurised into choosing on one path to follow – art or music – and struggled to make the choice.

After a short spell living in Paris he moved to the UK with his then-pregnant wife. It was in England that he first encountered a Buddhist group who provided him with the answer he had been looking for. “Do nothing” they told him.

By now, in the early ’70s, he had started illustrating the book covers for Michael Moorcock’s novels which he became famous for. Bob moved up to Wales to live with the Buddhist group, and became fascinated by Buddhist teachings. He gave up the guitar and painting, but continued to illustrate books for Mayflower and others because it earned him and the group their only income. The publishers gave Bob the freedom to design the covers as he wanted, so he filled them with images from Buddhism, and the visions he had while meditating. Unfortunately his involvement with the group led to a period of personal struggle and decline, although he never lost his faith in the teachings of Buddhism and read everything he thought worthy on the subject. 

Bob returned to Australia for a few years in the late 70’s, before permanently settling in the UK. He moved into a squat in Manchester with the same Buddhist group, staying with them for many years until he eventually bought his first house in Trefriw, Wales. He had a large extension built, which became his art studio where he spent his days painting and looking out over the fantastic views it offered of the Conwy Valley. 

Bob continued working as an illustrator because it paid the bills. He had quite an illustrious career, doing lots of work for Sainsbury’s, Woolworths and Liptons Tea  in the 80’s. At the same time he continued to explore his own art,  painting for himself and never feeling the need to show his work to anybody. That way he never felt any pressure to conform to any conventions – he created exactly what he wanted to create without the need to care what others thought. 

When he eventually retired from illustration, he became much happier and his style became much freer, without the constraints of detailed and meticulous commercial work. Finally rid of his demons, he felt artistically reborn and took up the piano to fulfil that passion he’d known as a young man creating music with his guitar. It’s clear from his work post-retirement than he had rediscovered a new-found creative joy.

In his 80’s Bob finally slowed down, commenting that he felt that he had said and expressed all he felt he needed to with his art, and now was the time to enjoy other peoples creativity, especially through his love of reading. He consumed anything he could find by the Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore.

Bob died quickly and unexpectedly, for which he would have been grateful. Quality of life was far more important to him than quantity.

In the words of his son Ben, “Once he’d overcome his demons, he became the most beautiful man I have ever known, who radiated warmth and compassion, and only saw the beauty in everything around him. He had found the peace he had been looking for for so many years and when death finally came calling for him he was ready for it and had absolutely no fear of it.”

One of the last projects Bob worked on was to catalogue his favourite paintings. This website will become a continuation of that catalogue and will ultimately contain all the work that Bob Haberfield kept. Sadly, there are there are periods, particularly his 20’s and early 30’s, where the work he did is either lost, sold or had been given away, but the aim is to create a repository of as much of his art as possible to honour the legacy of a truly remarkable artist.