Derek Goldberg

While I have dabbled in art since my early 20s, I have only now, in retirement, been able to devote myself to it passionately. I am fortunate to have found studio space in northwest London, which has helped unleash my creative potential, enabling me also to work on some large installations.

I was born in Zimbabwe, moving at age 10 to Cape Town in South Africa where I lived until I moved to the UK in my mid 20s. I had an intensely creative period from 1976 until 1980, but a career in engineering combined with bringing up three children meant that I had little time or space to pursue art. In retirement I have rekindled my love affair with art and am enjoying it immensely.

I would define myself essentially as an abstract artist, a colourist, with particular focus on the pop art and optical art genres. I am currently creating what, I believe, are unique installations using spent laughing gas canisters. These small steel canisters contain nitrous oxide and are used amongst young people as a recreational drug, a means of obtaining a legal high.

I now have a team of canister pickers, both friends and street cleaners, who pick up canisters for me from gutters, parks and car parks. So far I have incorporated more than 20,00 canist...

I have had no formal training in art, although took courses in lithography and screenprinting in the early 1980s. I have now retired from an engineering career. The canister art installations have brought together two sides of me: the artist and the engineer.

2012 - piece selected for Arts Depot Open
2019 - September, Whitefriars Studios Group Show
2019 - 20th November to 12th December - First solo show, Laugh out Loud, Whitefriars Gallery in Wealdstone, Harrow, London featuring 11 laughing gas canister art installations.
2019 - current - one of my illuminated canister art conical forms is on loan as a Xmas tree in the Harrow Civic Centre, my first public display.