Biography

My Early Years 

Evelyn G Brearley (1906-1985) became my new art teacher in the September of 1959 after Arthur Jacobs had left and having seen my portfolio of drawings and paintings, she strongly advised me to reconsider what I was going to do after leaving school. All of a sudden I found that I had interviews at the Art Colleges in Newport and Cardiff and was accepted to both. On receiving further advice I finally went to Newport which was considered, at the time, to have a superior painting school. So in less than two weeks of the start of the autumn term I had left Abersychan and embarked on a four year course in painting, drawing, anatomy and perspective in Newport. I have never looked back and always truly valued the constructive advice she gave me at that important time in my education and life.

Newport and Beyond

 "Color combinations and color relations are limitless and permit the artist to use his mind, his fantasy, his heart and his influences in the freest way"   -    Hans Hofmann  (1880-1966 ).

 Colour has been my lifelong passion. Living, studying and working in Wales in the 1960's initially had it's problems for me. The predominant tonality and colour harmony  in vogue at the time was inherited from the "kitchen sink" school of painting which was  active during the late 1950's and early 1960's. Fully saturated colours were mostly non-existent in contemporary painting in Wales at this time and when I painted some still lives in 1962 using pure cadmium orange and lemon yellow paint I was considered a 'bit of a joke' by some of my contemporaries - but it never reduced my passion for strong or emotive colours.

The most fundamental influence on my work and attitude to colour at this time was my discovery of the Gwendoline and Margaret Davies collection of French paintings in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff in 1960. I still remember being awestruck by the Nymphea paintings of Claude Monet and mesmerised by the colour of the dress in Pierre Auguste Renior  "La Parisienne" (La Dame en Bleu) was probably  the beginning of a lifetime obsession with the colour "Blue".

On returning from France, in the summer of 1962, I completed an extensive series of paintings of street markets and " les Halles "" in Paris. These were done in a temporary studio, kindly lent to me by my friend, Roger Trace, above his father's decorators merchants premises on Griffin Street in Newport. These paintings, were used as part of my submission for the 1963 Travelling Scholarship and which were submitted  to the College's external adjudicator, Robert Hunter, Head of Trinity College in Carmarthen  and I was fortunate to be awarded the prize.

These discoveries and those made during my visits to Paris in the summer vacations between 1960 and 1963 added a further dimension to my understanding of the use emotive and exotic colours.  The works I discovered by Alfred Manessier (1911-1992), Jean Le Moal (1909-2007) and Maurice Esteve(1904-2001) have been firm favourites of mine for over sixty years for their scintillating use of colour and regular visits to the Esteve Museum, in Bourges, have become a biennial event for Jill and myself.

Later the next, and possibly the most important single influence on my use of colour was the  Pierre Bonnard (1875-1946) Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1966. The brilliance and luminosity in paintings such as, "L'Atelier du Peintre au Cannet avec Mimosa" of 1938-1946. only 50 inches square gave the work the impression of apparently being much larger due to the vibrancy of the yellow trees. 

During my early years I exhibited widely throughout Britain, as can be seen in my list of exhibitions, and was elected as a full member of the Midland Group in 1972.  Around 1980, the regular showing of work became more difficult due to teaching commitments and working away from home .

Most of the 1980’s and early 1990's was a largely an unproductive period in my life and painting. Living away from home and travelling, all contributed to a situation where it was difficult to concentrate on work at the weekends, even though I still had my studio in the centre of Nottingham. Saying that there was some interesting but not really  significant work done in 1985 and 1989-90,  But generally, not much of any great value and no real  development   was forthcoming during these years. 

Early retirement from my teaching position in 1992 was welcome, but psychologically quite difficult to come to terms with. I had to reassess the whole of my work at that time and decide on it's future direction. Since 1987 I had mainly produced relatively small scale drawings in "polychromo" pencils on paper. They now began to grow in size and complexity until many were over a metre in width - quite large for coloured pencil drawings. In March 1996, I decided to see how the images I had been working with for many years could be developed using acrylic paints again. The main problem was one of technique and the application of the colours - how was I going to be able to obtain the same atmospheric effects and graduated interaction between painted areas, both “soft” and “hard”. So I eventually returned  to a strict neo-impressionist  method of applying paint to the pictures surface which I had not seriously used for some time; not directly for its divisionist possibilities but for its formal and surface quality alone.

My Studios

Dock Street Studio, Newport:   I returned home from London in the summer of 1964 and took a studio space with a number of friends, including Tom Wall, Brian Ford, Jack Crofton and Donald Osmond. It was a deserted attic space above a wholesale fruit merchants on the corner of Dock Street and Skinner Street in Newport. This gave us the opportunity to continue our work for over a year and it was a very productive time for all of us. While working there I painted a considerable number of large paintings using the geometric and the formal qualities found in oriental carpet imagery. When this time ended I managed to find a room in Park Square in Newport to continue working until we moved to Ebbw Vale in the summer of 1966.

Ebbw Vale Studio: Moving into a large 18th century house in Ebbw Vale gave me even more space to work. I had a very big studio space for my large paintings, another to continue with my printmaking and a third for smaller paintings and works on paper. This continued for five years until we moved to Nottingham in 1971 when I accepted a new teaching position.

Carrington Street Studio, Nottingham: Working in the Art Section at Clarendon College in the City gave me access to the section's studios on Saturdays and during the holidays to continue my professional work. This continued for six years until I went to teach at the College of Art and Design in Middlesbrough. In 1986 I managed to find a space in the Nottingham Artists Group studio complex on Carrington Street in the City where I was able to work.  Then, after about a year, I took on one of the larger studio spaces where I worked for the next thirty years until the end of the lease  in  December 2015. I now work independently from a private studio in the City.

Solo and Mixed Exhibitions of Work 

One Man Exhibitions

University of York, 1969

Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, 1974

Arts Lab, Birmingham, 1975

Braithwaite and Dunn Gallery, Nottingham, 1976

Nottingham Counselling Centre, 1985

Derby Playhouse, 1993-94

Nottingham Society of Artists Trust Gallery, September 2005

Nottingham Society of Artists Trust  Gallery, January 2009

" Backward Glances " :- A retrospective exhibition of recent paintings, together with photographic and archived work since 1962.

Nottingham Society of Artists Trust Gallery, June 2012

"Visions and Dreams" Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Derbyshire,  19th January to 7th April 2013

 Joint Exhibition

University of Sheffield (with Tom Wall), 1978

 Group Exhibitions 

South Wales Group, 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1964

Welsh Painting and Sculpture, 1961, 1962 and 1963, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff and Glyn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea 

Society for Education through Art:  Pictures for Welsh Schools, 1962 and 1963

Six Young Welsh Painters and Three Sculptors, Newport Art Gallery, 1963

Young Contemporaries, FBA Gallery, London, 1963

Arts Council of Great Britain  “Young Contemporaries”  Travelling Exhibition, 1963-64

The St. David's Exhibition 1964.  National Museum of Wales, Glyn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth and Bangor Art Gallery 

"Contemporary Painters", Thompson House, Cardiff, 1964 

Contemporary British Art (Invited Artist), Bradford City Art Gallery, 1964, 1965 and 1966

London Group, FBA Gallery, London, 1966

Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales, 1966, 1975, 1978 and1980

"Now", Open Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, South Wales Group/Welsh Arts Council: National Museum of Wales, University College, Aberystwyth; Memorial Gallery, Newtown and the Glyn Vivian  Art Gallery, Swansea.

Midland Group, Nottingham, 1971, 1972, 1973 and 1974

Midland Group Touring Exhibition 1972-73:  Arts Council of Northern Ireland, University of East Anglia, Public Museum and Art Gallery,

Kettering;  Scunthorpe Museum and Art Gallery, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull and University College, Aberystwyth

“Cymru Nawr”, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, 1972

Clarendon College Staff Exhibition;  Little Theatre, Lacemarket, Nottingham 1973

University of Nottingham, 1973

Gallery 359, Nottingham,1973, 1974 and 1975

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, London, 1973

Earth, Air and Water, 1975, Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales, Criccieth/Welsh Arts Council; Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre, Library Hall,

Haverfordwest and Bangor City Art Gallery 

Cleveland College of Art Staff Exhibition, Middlesbrough Art Gallery, 1979

Winter Exhibition, Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston-upon-Hull, 1982 and 1983

Nottingham Artists Group, University of Nottingham, 1987

Nottingham Artists Group, various venues in Nottinghamshire, 1988

Nottingham Artists Group. Occasional participation in “Open Studio” weekends since 1986

City Gallery, Leicester, 1993

Nottingham Society of Artists Trust, 2003

“ Open” Festival of Contemporary Visual Arts, Nottingham 2006 and 2007

" Derby City Open "  2011,  Highly Commended Status

Nottingham Artists Group Final Exhibition 2015

Prizes and Awards 

Travelling Scholarship, Paris, 1963

Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales Purchase Prize, 1966

Second Painting Prize, Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales, 1978

Northern Arts, 1978

Public Collections

Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales Permanent Collection, 1966

Bradford City Art Gallery,  Contemporary British Art Purchase Prize, 1965

University of Sheffield, 1978

University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd,

Nottingham Counselling Centre

Derbyshire Education Authority - SEA Pictures for Schools

Glamorgan Education Authority - SEA Pictures for Schools

Nottinghamshire County Council

Private Collections 

Numerous works in  collections in Great Britain, Europe and the USA

 Bibliography and Publications

Credits and contribution to Anton Bradburn's  "Amdega Book of Conservatories"  published by David and Charles in September 1987

Numerous citations in Gerald Porter's "Days of Wine and Roses" : reminiscences of two years spent at Newport College of Art in the 1960's, published in 2015

" Architecture, Architects and the Design of Libraries",  MA dissertation, University  of Loughborough, 1995

Membership of Professional Groups and Societies etc.

Midland Group 

 Nottingham Artists Group

 Delius Society

Grieg Society

Ivor Gurney Society

Northampton Symphony Orchestra