'Split Bit' Painting

Born in 1936 at Wordsley, a village on the edge of the Black Country to working class parents. They were surrounded on one hand with the beautiful countryside of Shropshire to the west, while to the east stretched the industrial midlands. A present of a bicycle for his 15th birthday was to have a lasting effect on his future life, and in the following years rode thousands of miles with the local cycling club. Often combining his rides with sketching. His father started his working life as a designer in the local Stourbridge glass industry, and so encourage his sons creative talent when he was accepted aged 13 to attend the Stourbridge Junior Art School, and two years later progressing into the main art school. Here he stayed for the next six years, studying in the old traditions, with many hours spent in the 'life room' drawing the nude figure, which is the most testing activity for the visual artist. Other studies included, painting, printmaking,sculpture, pottery and glass design. By the age of twenty he was an accomplished designer and draughtsman, having completed his degree in Painting with Lithography. Faced, frustratingly, with an offer of a place at the Royal College of Art and two years mandatory National Service, he reluctantly began the two years as a photographer in the RAF, two days after his twenty first birthday. Two years later he faced the prospect of earning a living and embarked on the Art Teachers Diploma course at the West of England College of Art in Bristol. His final dissertation was entitled 'The Film in Education'. Once qualified, he moved from the south west of England to the north east to a post of assistant lecturer to teach drawing and painting, at what was then the Newcastle College of Art and Industrial Design. Later to become the Polytechnic Department of Fine Art and which is now part of The University of Northumbria. For twenty eight years, raising a family of three, two daughters and a son, he pursued his career as a lecturer, experiencing the changing patterns of art education. Ideas became more important than the traditional craft based art forms, and with his knowledge of film and photography he became a driving force in a new Media Studies department which was part of the BA Hons Fine Art course. During the sixties and seventies he met many major figures in the art world, including such important artists as Joseph Beuys and Richard Hamilton.