Joe Bootham

The latter were a group of Bolton artists who, in the early 1950s, met and exhibited at "Smokey Joe’s", a coffee bar popular with patrons of the nearby theatres and cinema.

Among his pocketbook-sized sketches of passengers on board the ship was one of Peter McLeavey, who, from 1966 onwards, was to become a well-known dealer in contemporary New Zealand art.

During McLeavey's many visits to Bootham's home, the artist executed the large pastel portrait of him now in the Alexander Turnbull Library collection.

Rejection for exhibition of his painting "The Day I Rode the Blue Bull Through China" provoked some controversy in local art circles.

In 1966, when visiting New Plymouth, he met New Zealand regionalist painter Michael Smither and began a continuing friendship that was artistically stimulating and rewarding.

Bootham's ability to capture the unique light and landscape characteristics of a particular country is a skill also revealed in his paintings done in England, Scotland, Australia, and North Africa and Palestine (when posted there 1945–47 with the Royal Signals).

His art of this period was influenced by his interest in myth, religion, history, memory, time and space, psychology (general and autobiographical), and philosophy.