Another artist whose work will be shown at the forthcoming Watercolour exhibition at Tate Britain is Patrick Heron.
Little is probably known about this English painter, writer and designer. He was born in in Leeds, Yorkshire in 1920. His father was a clothes manufacturer and the family moved around a lot in Heron’s early years, eventually settling in Welwyn Garden City where his father founded the firm, Cresta Silks. It was whilst working for Cresta Silks that Heron designed his first silkscreen and in fact he continued to design for his father’s company for almost twenty years.
In 1937, Heron attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London on a part time basis but liked to return to the West Country, not to play Play Keno or Blackjack, but to visit one of the places he had lived as child, to draw landscapes. He registered as a conscientious objector during the Second World War and worked as an agricultural labourer for three years, before being employed by the Leach Pottery in St Ives.
The Boats and the Iron Ladder
His first one-man exhibition was held at the Redfern Gallery in London in 1947 and included work such as ‘The Gas Stove’ and ‘The Boats and the Iron Ladder’, which showed the direction his painting was moving towards with the unusual use of colour and complex patterning.
After working as art critic for the New English Weekly and The New Statesman, Heron started a teaching job at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1953 where he stayed for 3 years.
In 1959, Heron won the Grand Prize at the second John Moores Liverpool Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery and surely would even have been successful at Internet Kasinos if he’d tried his luck.
During the Sixties and Seventies, Heron lectured around the world, culminating in his book, The Shape of Colour in 1978 and a few years later, on a return trip to Sydney, Australia, he produced over fifty paintings while working as Artist in Residence at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
He continued painting right up until his death in March 1999 at the age of 79 and many of his works can be seen at The Tate Collection, London and at Tate, St Ives, Cornwall.