I love etching, particularly the medium of aquatint, which suits my vision as a painter in its focus upon light and dark tonal values. It has to be said that it is a hard taskmaster; although I sometimes miss the freedom that painting allows, on the whole I find that the discipline involved in printmaking is a stimulus rather a handicap, perhaps this is because the very freedom that painting allows makes it somehow too open-ended for me; freedom within limits is my particular starting gate, and those limits come ready-made with etching.

There is nothing in painting quite like the moment of lifting the first proof off a plate - everything I have been doing up to that point is concentrated in that moment, and the risk that it might not result in success merely adds to the excitement, which has never palled during the fifty years since I did my first etching.

As to my attitude to subject matter, I tend to mistrust too much emphasis on subjective response; I feel that my job as an artist is to look outwards rather than inwards, to be surprised by the wonder of things. This is not, of course to deny the existence or value of a personal response, rather that I find that if I consciously try to express it, the result is usually forced and superficial. If there is a personal response, it will come through without any conscious effort on my part.

 

Finally, as a counter to the immense amount of critical/philosophical theorising that is currently around in the artistic environment, I would simply say that I do art because I like looking at things. Martin Bloch once told his students, 'your job as artists is to look, not to be looked at.'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brief CV

 

1951-55 National Diploma in Design, University of Reading

 

1955-7 National Service-9 months in Cyprus

 

1957-8 Art Teachers' Diploma, University of Reading 1958-62 Teaching art at Wells Blue School, Somerset

 

1962-65 Lecturing in Art and Craft, Nottingham College of Education 1965-77 Senior, then Principal Lecturer in Art and Design, Loughborough College of Education

 

1977-86 Head of design Faculty, Groby Community College, Leicester

 

1983-4 MA in Art Education at University of Leicester 1986 Retired, moved to Norfolk

 

1986-95 Teaching art at Norwich High School for Girls 1995-present /retired again, started printmaking professionally

 

 

Exhibitions

 

Sept 98-present - Regular exhibitor at Norwich Print Fair

 

1997-present - Regular participant in Norfolk Open Studios 1997 Exhibited at Old Workshop Gallery, Corpusty, Norfolk 1998 Solo exhibition at Darcy Gallery, Ipswich

 

2004 Solo exhibition at Kings Manor Gallery, University of York

 

2005 Solo retrospective exhibition at North Norfolk Exhibition Centre, Salthouse, Norfolk

2009 Exhibited with Byard Callery, Cambridge at New York

2010 Exhibited with Norwich Print Fair at Bankside Gallery London

 

Galleries - work shown/held at

 

Bircham Gallery, Holt

Focus Gallery, Nottingham

Alby Crafts, Norfolk

Doric Arts, Kings Lynn

Stockers Gallery, Wells-next-the-sea

Holkham Gallery, Wells-next-the-sea

Harding House Gallery, Lincoln

Byard Gallery, Cambridge

Affinity Arts Gallery, Castle Cary, Somerset

Koen Broes Gallery, Bruges, Belgium

Biscuit Factory Gallery, Newcastle

Craftco Gallery, Southwold

 

 

 

CONTACT DETAILS

Telephone 01263 860473

 

As part of the Norfolk Open Studio Project

which normally takes place in late May,

his studio is open then* for you to visit at

The Cottage, 1 Long Yard, The Lane,

Briston, Norfolk NR24 2LB

 

 

(*at other times, by appointment)

 

 

 

Colin writes:

Although I taught art and design for 38 years in various schools and Colleges of Education, I always continued to practise my own work in spare time and holidays until I retired in 1995, when I began to work as a professional printmaker in a purpose-built studio in the garden of our house in North Norfolk.