JILL BOOTY was educated at Northampton High School and Newnham College, Cambridge.
At school she knew she was a painter and after A levels she was offered a place at the Slade School of Art in London but at this point she renounced painting in favour of reading Modern Languages (Spanish, Italian and Portuguese) at Newnham.
At Cambridge she spent much of her time acting and afterwards worked professionally in television and with Theatre Workshop and the Old Vic Company. But the urge to draw and paint never stopped, and soon became more important to her than acting. She married Robin Chapman – actor, playwright and novelist.
In the 1970s she had her first exhibition in Paris. Later came exhibitions at the Carlisle Gallery, Chelsea, and in Northampton, backed by the municipality and the arts council, curated by Tracey Clarke, where she showed the Magic Mountain and its series, and her Pythagorean paintings (Mountains on the Hypotenuse). By then she had discovered an old building where wine had been made near Perpignan. By a lake, and the sea – with a view of the last mountain of the Pyrenees. This became her studio until 2020, when she returned to London.