Peter Booth
The Win­ter of Man

‘…Before it can ever be a repose for the sens­es, land­scape is a work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from stra­ta of mem­o­ry as from lay­ers of rock’. (1) For Booth, the win­ter land­scape is one of seren­i­ty and the promise of renew­al. It reminds us of the resilience of nature and is a metaphor for human endurance against the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal tri­als of life. Snow pro­vokes in Booth a sim­i­lar med­i­ta­tion to that of Gabriel in James Joyce’s Dublin­ers, whose soul swoons as he hears ​‘the snow falling faint­ly through the uni­verse, and faint­ly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the liv­ing and the dead’. (2)

Excerpt from Jason Smith, Peter Booth: Human / Nature, Nation­al Gallery of Vic­to­ria, Mel­bourne, 2003, p. 14.

(1) Simon Schama, Land­scape and Mem­o­ry, Fontana Press, Lon­don, 1996, pp. 6 – 7.

(2) James Joyce, ​‘The Dead’ in Dublin­ers, Pan­ther Books, Lon­don, 1977, p. 201.