The Six Swans (Study for Painting) Drawing

Born 1950 in England. He studied Advertising and Design at the School of Art in Oldham. After school he was accepted onto an art and design course at Oldham Art School. It was whilst here that he met three like minded artists and formed the Embryo Group in 1970. Realizing that as individual artists the chance of them producing enough work for a one man show was a remote possibility but as a group of artist they could fill a gallery with ease. The group exhibited in Oldham, Stockport, Altrincham, Warwick, Salford… After three years he parted company with the Embryo Group and started to exhibit and sell his work through a Manchester gallery. This was a very prolific and financially successful time for him. He was chosen to exhibit with a group of artists including David Hockney to represent the North of England in an exhibition at the Mall Gallery, London. He felt that he needed to hone his technical skills further and to this end he went on to study Fine Art (Painting) at the Manchester Metropolitan University, England. This proved to be a profoundly damaging time for him artistically. His work was constantly derided by his tutors as it did not conform to currently fashionable beliefs of what art should be. He was neither a modernist nor a conceptualist, in the words of his tutors he simply ‘painted by numbers’. He did gain a degree but the damage the three years had done made him doubt his art. Although he did still paint in fits and starts, he concentrated on living a ‘normal life’. Using his abilities as an illustrator in a series of jobs until in the late 90’s he started designing and developing special needs educational software. In 2003 he was made redundant and became a self employed educational developer. However the feeling that he should really be painting again had been steadily growing over the years and so he decided to stop ‘normal work’ and return to his first love art. So it was in late 2015 after a layoff of 34 years he began to paint again. His passion for art started at an early age, he started drawing as a way to combat the boredom of months spent recovering from a serious surgical procedure. His work draws deeply on his childhood, the effect of religion and education, a fascination with the myths and symbolism found in art and literature, the English countryside, music and traditions.