Background Brushstrokes

From an early age I was taught to draw and paint, first with water colours and then in oils, by my parents. My father, Ben Wheeler, also passed on to me an academic understanding and appreciation of art history. His own apprenticeship had been in difficult circumstances. As a youth he had set his heart on becoming an artist, but World War II intervened and he found himself part of the Allied invasion force that landed on the beaches of Sicily and fought its way via Casino and Rome to the foothills of the Alps. But since his soldiering placed him in an armoured car, he managed to smuggle his paints with him. So some of my earliest artistic memories are of his wartime watercolours.

Returning home he took an art degree at Reading University, where he met and married his fellow art student, Mavis. I am their first child. My mother was a sensitive artist in her own right. She closely observed creatures as they are and could swiftly draw a subject so that you could feel its character, whereas my father was more drawn by the fascination of abstraction.

Gregarious and loving his subject, he quickly made friends with other characters in the art world such as art critic John Dalton who had been the private secretary of Paul Nash before the war, and Stanley Spencer, who still attended to minor details of his remarkable work in the Sandham Memorial Chapel in nearby Burghclere.

Consequently I grew up with the smell of oil paints in the house, and visits from art loving friends, some quiet and others very ebullient indeed. For all his strong sense of discipline in his work as a schoolmaster, there was something of a Dylan Thomas in my Dad. So as well as the laughter of loud social gatherings at weekends, there were animated discussions of English Literature and drama, history, and the visual arts, and there were pictures on the walls, and books on the shelves, and a gramophone filling the house with glorious Italian opera music. And eventually, after much hammering at a clattering typewriter, my father produced a book of his own, Man Nature And Art, which is still obtainable from specialist bookstores. He finished his career as Head of Art History and Research at Exeter College of Art.

At my first school, if ever an art project were organised I soon found myself put in charge of it. At the age of seven I won a junior art competition for a painting that focused on Jesus with children, but why I chose that subject I do not know. Later, at Reading School, the art master trusted me with a key to the art room and its materials through every lunch break, which led to gaining an A grade in 'A' level art two years earlier than normal. The door was now open to go to the Slade or some other art school. But the sixties had just begun to swing and art colleges were in a ferment of drug-assisted revolt against traditional authorities and standards. There seemed to be little room to develop the representational style of art I enjoyed, and so I thought it best to pursue another love, which was the study of history. This took me to St John's College, Oxford. Prophetically my art master at Reading School advised me that art was and always would be part of my make-up, and so it has turned out. Whether in the army, or travelling, lecturing in Africa or raising a family, I have always found painting to be a source of creativity and encouragement, and have always had the approval of others in pursuing it. Mostly my pictures have been sold or given away to others over the years, but many of the originals you see on this site, are still in my home.