Colin Bishop : Curriculum Vitae
My interest in art began in 1990 following a chance remark by a friend. Thus began the long apprenticeship of learning about the problems of painting in watercolour.
Although I have attended a few classes, workshops and many demonstrations, I am to a large extent self-taught, mainly by way of books, videos and much practice. My background before I retired was in civil engineering and I was fortunate to start that career in the days before the age of computers when every engineer worked at a drawing board. This gave me valuable training in handling pencils, pens and other drawing implements.
I started by buying an elementary book by Alwyn Crawshaw on watercolour painting and then some equipment. Despite the claim by many that watercolour is the most difficult medium, I decided to concentrate my efforts towards mastering it rather than spread limited resources of time working in other media such as pastel, oils or acrylics. As a result, all my paintings are executed in watercolour.
My style is naturally influenced by the paintings of the many artists I admire. The long list of names includes, John Singer Sargent, Edward Seago, and John Yardley. As for content, almost all of my paintings depict people enjoying themselves in, for example, holiday situations or cafe scenes and general street scenes. Whenever I pause to consider the matter, it seems that what is most important in this world is other people.
I often question my reasons for painting and come up with a variety of answers, such as – I paint in order to learn how to paint. My paintings will hopefully give some pleasure to someone. It provides a great opportunity to meet like-minded fellow creative artists.
My work can usually be found at the Albany Gallery, Cardiff where I am a Gallery Artist. Images can be viewed on their website at http://www.albanygallery.com. It has also been exhibited in the Washington Gallery, Penarth St David’s Hall, Cardiff and Y Galeri, Caerphilly.
September 2012
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