Ray Atkins: a Painter's Odyssey

Ray Atkins (b 1937) is one of the least well known major painters of his generation. He studied at Bromley College of Art in Kent before gaining a postgraduate place at the Slade despite having failed the National Diploma in Design in 1961. Teaching posts at Reading University and then Falmouth Art School followed, and the latter led to a 34-year stay in Cornwall. He painted the extraordinary landscape of the china clay country around St Austell with its colossal pits and mounds of micae, and the desolation left over by the demise of the tin mining industry. Intimate subjects of children, gardens, family life and inevitably the sea were also part of the ouevre. The nineties also saw a long series of works on the theme of dance.Peter Davies’ text follows Atkins’ journey from the dark but creative London period to the high spots in the eighties with a retrospective at the Royal West of England Academy and with work selected for the John Moores in Liverpool, a room at a Serpentine summer Show, and representation in shows at the Hayward gallery.David Stoker gives a personal and touching account of his discovery of Atkins in France, leading to a growing friendship and a deep understanding and respect for the work.Harvey’s painting output was prodigious, and this book includes approximately 100 illustrations of his favoured subjects: the Cornish at work, children at play, and intimate interior scenes and conversation pieces. Many of his contemporaries in Newlyn were visiting ‘observers’, but for Harold Harvey, who rarely went outside the county even though a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy, painting the Cornish world ‘because it was there’ was his whole life.