Cyril Croucher

Cyril was born in 1951 and grew up in Shoeburyness, a small village in the East of England. As a child, he spent many happy hours in the company of his grandmother - a great storyteller who merged fantasy and reality in her spellbinding tales. These stories provided the inspiration for his early work, and traces of fantasy can still be found in his paintings of granite cottages huddled into tiny alleyways around the safe haven of harbours.

He went on to graduate from the Southend-on-Sea Art College, and set out to establish himself as a professional artist. Although Cyril had enjoyed drawing and painting from a young age, he found that he was struggling to create work that he himself was satisfied with; he finally decided to retrain and pursued a successful career as a surveyor for a number of years. Then, in 1993 following a move to the South West, he returned to painting full-time, newly attuned to his own creativity.

Cyril employs a distinctive palette of acrylics on board; inspired by the granite which features in the local landscape and architecture he merges muted greens and pinks with blues and greys, identifying the warmest colours in the stone. His chosen view is the alternative one, looking back at the land from the sea. This lends an air of intrigue to the finished images with dark entrances, interesting passageways hidden from view and shadowy figures at windows. There is also a timeless quality to his work, as all elements of the painting look the same today as they have done for many years.