About

Born in Leek in 1948, Kevin spent his life there, apart from a spell in France in 1966 pursuing a romantic dream. Educated at East Street Primary School and then at Mountside Secondary Modern School he showed an early aptitude for art entering paintings to the Leek & District Arts Club Children’s Exhibitions from 1959 to 1964 consistently gaining top prizes and also BBC Television ‘Sketch Club’. In his final year at Mountside he attended day release classes at Leek School of Art and Crafts and then in 1963, aged 15, become a full-time student at the School of Art.

Work, then at the school, covered a range of crafts with a distinct emphasis on drawing, especially life drawing, taught in a very traditional way. Then among the lecturers he encountered would have been; Arthur Littlewood (Principal), Eric England, Pam Littlewood, Clare Heath, Barbara Hutchinson and Roger Hampton. New rules on academic attainment precluded Kevin from studying fine art at higher education level so, instead, in 1966 he decided to go to France to pursue his dream; living the life of an artist. Virtually nothing is known about his time aside from an intriguing set of photographs showing Kevin with a group of artists he stayed with in Les Coupres in southern France and a story that any work produced in France stayed in France!

Talented, Kevin not only produced work that reflected views, places and characters of Leek during a particular time but then developed a more personal, idiosyncratic approach sometimes autobiographical and provocative, sometimes mysterious and visionary, always interesting, never complacent. Kevin died of lung cancer in 2017.