The Janus Studio

1973-1977

Original Lithographs

 A portfolio of prints by the many artists who

worked at the Janus Studio

is in preparation

The prints have been scanned

at a very high resolution

but have been reduced to a smaller

format to facilitate

presentation on the web

Janus Studio

&

Gallery

1973-1977

This is the record of an attempt to give art back to ordinary people

art to which they can relate

and feel comfortable with

- Not an investment opportunity –

rather

Created with skill and that special kind of sincerity

Which belongs not to the world of commerce

But rather to the world of the imagination

In a simple and friendly atmosphere

- In a Yorkshire village famous for its moor -

Artist and printmaker worked together to create

An environment which has not existed in England

Since Victorian times

A collaboration between artist and printer

The attempt lasted for four years

Yet in that time

Janus was artistic home to over thirty artists

And the studio produced over

Two hundred original lithographs

Employing techniques devised in the studio

These techniques were developed for the artists

And their secrets have never been revealed

September 2005

The Janus Studio

1973 - 1977

Janus was founded, appropriately enough, in January 1973, with two primary aims: to provide for Yorkshire artists a workshop in which new techniques of printmaking could be explored, and to publish the results of a fruitful collaboration between artist and printer at prices within the reach of most people with an interest in art. Evidence that the objectives of the studio were judged worthy came in December that year when John Hewitt wrote as follows in the Bulletin of the Yorkshire Arts Association:

Ever since Hogarth, the original print has held the promise of becoming the popular art form of the people. It is a promise which in our century is rapidly turning to ashes. Instead of spreading the artistic gospel (or as Hogarth saw it, the moral truths) original prints are increasingly becoming an art commodity. ... There are a few straws of hope, one of them in a neat
workshop at Regent Road, Ilkley, where Dr Robin Alston is trying to snap the vicious circle with new printmaking techniques. ... That old word ‘revolutionary’ is overworked. But certainly his endeavours so far have
begun to push back the boundaries of printmaking.

In the first year Janus prints were exhibited at a number of galleries in Menston, York, Bradford and Leeds, but 1974 saw the opening of the Janus Gallery on Church Street adjacent to the Ilkley Museum & Art Gallery, with ample space to exhibit the work of the growing number of artists. The premises also had a small flat on the top floor for visiting artists. For several months it was occupied by Tadamichi Tsuzuki, a brilliant young artist from Tokyo recommended to me by my old friend Father Peter Milward who had taught him English Literature at Sophia University in Tokyo. In 1975 the studio was bursting at the seams and I moved both the gallery and workshop on Regent Road to a substantial building - all but derelict - on The Grove. By now the number of visiting artists had grown to twenty and regular exhibitions attracted visitors from all over the North of England. Visiting artists included Terry Durham who executed a delightful series of prints on themes from the lives of the Brontes; Stuart Walton, whose evocations of the vanishing cityscapes of West Yorkshire proved immensely popular, and which pushed the technique of architectural printmaking to new heights; an old friend from my Toronto days, Bernard Etienne (many of his Janus prints are in major collections, including the Bibliothèque Nationale in Rue Richelieu, Paris); Benita Bammer from Austria (her paintings of Arabian horses are known throughout the world); and Wendy Wilson from New York, who had spent a year living with the Fulani tribe in West Africa. Many artists came and went after executing just one or two prints; but many returned to continue experimenting with new techniques.

Janus thrived on variety: each artist presented a unique challenge because each responded differently to the process of creating images on a plate. On many occasions it was necessary to adapt techniques to suit the artist and the repertoire of techniques expanded. The labour involved may be judged by the fact that for an edition of 100 copies of a colour print (in as many as fifteen colours) over 400 impressions were wasted. In the three years that Janus operated in Ilkley I disposed of three tons of handmade paper! The processes involved in achieving a single print in a single colour were as follows:

1. Roll up the ink on a glass slab - the roller weighed 20 lbs;
2. Dampen plate with a sponge and exactly the right amount of water and alcohol;
3. Roll the ink on to the metal plate with absolute evenness;
4. Place the paper on the press;
5. Wind the impression cylinder over the plate then the paper;
6. Remove the paper and hang to dry.

The press I used was a Nakanishi proofing press, weighing 2 tons. It consisted of a bed for the paper; a geared roller/cylinder; and a bed for the plate. The maximum size I could print was A2. The procedures listed above took, on average, five minutes. Spoilage due to less-than-perfect inking or paper placement was approximately 25%. For most single-colour prints production averaged ten impressions per hour. An edition of 100 would take - with occasional breaks - about 12 hours. For colour prints the processes were much more complicated, since colours had to created "on the fly" based on a sequence of images drawn on the plate for a succession of colours: e.g. yellow+blue = green. In sophisticated printmaking there are, of course, at least 20 varieties of yellow and blue; and rolling the ink often involved ensuring that some areas of the plate had ink in greater or lesser density. Once a satisfactory combination of two colours had been achieved, it was then necessary to ensure absolute consistency for at least 200 impressions. This procedure was then repeated for a third, fourth, and fifth colour with an eventual edition of perhaps 50 copies. The most complicated print I ever had to deal with was of a waterfall by Tadamichi Tsuzuki and involved 15 layers of colour. Printmaking at Janus represented, therefore, a huge investment of skill and energy; constant vigilance by both artist and printmaker; and the wastage of perhaps 300 sheets of precious handmade paper. This is what one pays for when acquiring a handmade lithograph!

Since each artist presented unique problems in adapting techniques to suit it would sometimes take five days of experimenting with different techniques before both of us were satisfied that a particular technique was appropriate for his/her vision of the way the final image was desired. In a real sense, the printmaker is quite literally a midwife to the artists with whom he works, coaxing from both the artist and the medium the desired image on paper, and I count those three years in Ilkley as the happiest and most fulfilling in my life. Though it came to an end when the British Library asked me to plan and execute The Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, the fruits will soon be available to all via the Internet - something undreamt of in 1976!

I produced several books and booklets at Janus: most are out of print, but I do have a few copies of three. One of these represents a first: a collection of poems by Penelope Shuttle that appeared in her authentic manuscript before it ever appeared in type! The other book of which I am proud was a facsimile of W.H. Auden's Poems 1928, reproduced in exact facsimile from a copy in Durham University Library, and with his full blessing. Auden came to the Ilkley Literature Festival in 1973, an event I helped to organise, and we spent many hours discussing a project I put to him: to produce in a style, format and typography of his own choosing the poems he considered his best. That was never to be: for a few weeks later I was told of his death.

Techniques of Printmaking

Printmaking has its origins in antiquity, and can be traced in Sumeria ca. 1000 B.C., and China ca. 150 A.D. In Europe the earliest form of printmaking was with textiles. When papermaking was introduced into Spain in the middle of the twelfth century it became possible to multiply an image on a relatively cheap material, but it was not until the fifteenth sixteenth century that woodblock printing became popular in Germany in the production of playing cards. One of the earliest known engravings is a German print dated 1446. The greatest artist/printmaker in the sixteenth century was Albrecht Dürer. After Dürer printmaking spread to Italy, Holland, France, England and Spain. Artists such as Rubens, Van Dyck, Lorrain, Ribera and Rembrandt took printmiaking to new heights of artistic subtlety. In the eighteenth century in England Hogarth is generally credited with having made the print a collectable item of "original" art. At the end of the century two figures of great importance for the history of printmaking emerged: in England, William Blake, and in Spain Goya. Printmaking developed rapidly with new techniques being devised in the nineteenth century, and the medium attracted most of the great artists of the "modern" school: Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Miro, Dali to mention a few. Then came Kandinsky and Klee (Bauhaus), and in England the lithograhs of Moore and Sutherland. Today, printmaking is a thriving industry with ateliers producing important work in countries from Japan and China to Russia and Eastern Europe.

The essential elements in the making of an original print (as opposed to a machine-produced print which can be multiplied ad infinitum) are as follows:

1. The artist works an image on a plate (copper, zinc, steel, aluminium), wood, or calcareous stone (the origin of lithography);
2. An impression is taken from the plate/stone on (usuallty) handmade paper;
3. An edition number is agreed between the printer and artist (often the same);
4. Each print is numbered and signed by the artist. Artist's Proofs usually signed:
     A/P; others e.g.: 4/56;
5. The plate is then either disfigured to prevent its re-use, or destroyed.

There are, of course, instances where the plate or woodblock is not destroyed: e.g. many plates were distributed to those buying the Nonesucvh edition of Dickens' Works, and original woodblocks carved by Thomas Bewick survive, as do copper plates for books and maps printed in the eighteenth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. This is why such prints, whether they be etchings, mezzotints, engravings, woodcuts, are called original. They can be reproduced using photomechanical processes but there will only ever be as many original prints as are called for by the artist's signature.

The value of an original print depends on a number of factors, of which the artist's fame is undoubtedly the most important. A Picasso lithograph limited to 100 copies is clearly more expensive to acquire than an Eric Gill woodcut. But, without doubt, there is little relationship between a mechanical reprint of a Toulous Lautrec poster produced by the thousands and costing £5 and a coloured lithograph printed in an edition of 50 copies costing £100.

Paper

In 1973 I learned that the paper mill at Wookey Hole in Somerset had been sold to Madame Tussauds. Suspecting the worst I immediately went to the mill and discovered that instructions had been given to pulp the remaining stock of handmade and Fourdrinier paper, much of it going back to the 1930s. I hired a truck and most of what was left (about 9 tons) was loaded and shipped to Yorkshire to the workshop I had rented from the Milk Marketing Board on Regent Road. Fortunately the floor was strong enough to carry this vast quantity of wonderful paper! In three years I produced several thousand prints that virtually exhausted my supply, since for a each single-colour print about four in every ten sheets had to be discarded because of imperfections in inking; while for every multi-colour print the wastage was close to 70%. In all Wookey Hole paper was in about eight sizes and fourteen textures and colours.

For many of the prints Wookey Hole paper was inappropriate, and I used paper from Barcham Green and Devon, arches from France, and a variety of papers from private makers in Italy and elsewhere.

Disposal of Waste & Plates

There are two time-honoured principles adopted by printmakers: (1) that waste sheets must be treated as waste - artists always find this principle difficult to accept! - and (2) that plates are destroyed when the edition has been completed. These principles were strictly followed at Janus for the near-200 prints produced between 1973 and 1977.

Janus Techniques

In the years that followed the closure of Janus in 1977 - because the British Library asked me to leave Yorkshire and direct a massive project to catalogue all the books printed in Britain and British territories between 1701 and 1800 in all the major libraries of the world – I was often asked to give lectures on printmaking to printing and bibliographical societies. I always provided the audience with a sample of prints designed to illustrate the ten (or more) techniques which I had developed at Janus. In spite of persistent questioning as to how Janus prints were produced I have never divulged the secrets!

The Artists

STUART WALTON

Stuart Walton was the first professional artist who came to work at the newly founded Janus Studio in Ilkley. Up to that time (September 1973) I had only succeeded in attracting amateur artists to assist me in devising the new techniques for printmaking that would appeal to professionals. Stuart was then Fine Art Felllow of Yorkshire Television, the company that created Coronation Street. Stuart appealed to the YTV management because of the intense interest in the characters of Coronation Street and the rapidly vanishing streetscapes of Yorkshire and North England.

His supreme gift of being able to reproduce on paper with a pencil the intricate details in a sad and melancholy evocation of working-class architecture in cities like Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield and Morley spurred me to try and develop a technique for original lithography which could capture the subtle detail he demonstrated with a pencil and handmade paper. It took several months of trial and error; but I will never forget the expression on his face when the first trial print came off the Nakanishi press of Stuart’s first drawing on the plate. He could not believe his eyes! There, in exquisite detail, was every stroke, however light, of the pencil. It was only that evening - when I showed the resulting proof to a few knowledgeable friends – that I realized I had stumbled on a technique which would take the art of printmaking into a new chapter.

Anxious to promote (somehow) what I had developed I took six prints I had produced with Stuart to the Features Editor - John Hewitt - of the Bradford Telegraph & Argus. He immediately agreed to run a promotion, and we got two full pages of the paper! As a result of that promotion Janus Studio sold several hundred prints by mail. But, more important, it aroused the curiosity of hundreds of Yorkshire folk who wanted to see for themselves what I was up to! There followed exhibitions of Janus prints in Leeds, Bradford, Harrogate and York, and London.

Stuart Walton continued to explore the possibilities of the Janus techniques, and his last portfolio consisted in six prints of the vanishing docklands landscape in East London. I persuaded the Thames River Police in Wapping to take an interest in the venture and we were provided with a launch and a knowledgeable veteran officer who knew the dockscape intimately. When the prints were eventually made from Stuart’s on-the-spot drawings and sketches, I sent a set to Wapping. They can be seen today in the Wapping Police Station Museum.

Many of Stuart’s Janus lithographs are in national art collections, including galleries in Bradford, Leeds, and London.

In the years after the demise of Janus in 1977 (when I was asked to undertake a huge international project by the newly formed British Library) I was often asked to give lectures to printing societies. I was invariably asked to divulge the basis of the several techniques I pioneered: which I have never done!

ERIC TAYLOR

Eric Taylor came to Janus almost as soon as I had begun working with Stuart Walton and Terry Durham. As a teacher at the Leeds Polytechnic – where he taught traditional printmaking – he doubtless was curious to know what was happening on Regent Road in Ilkley. He had seen the full-page spread in the Bradford Telegraph & Argus. When I showed him the first experiments with Stuart and Terry he quickly realized that Janus really did work with novel techniques, and he challenged me to come up with a technique which could simulate ink wash on non-absorbent paper! That was a challenge! Eventually I found a way of satisfying him, and we produced a few prints in very limited editions. The Garden of Eden was undoubtedly the best; but I also was intrigued with a print in which a landscape becomes a nightmare – including a frightened mare!

I lost track of Eric when he retired from the Polytechnic, but some of his works are still on view in what is now Leeds Metropolitan University.

TADAMICHI TSUZUKI 

Tadamichi Tsuzuki was sent to me by Father Peter Milward a distinguished teacher of English Literature in one of Tokyo's prestigious universities - the Catholic University Sophia. Peter wrote to me and said that Tsuzuki had uncommon talents, and could I look after him for a year? In the Spring of 1974 he arrived at our home overlooking the Wharfe valley and Ilkley. He spoke very little English; but there was something

about him which encouraged me to believe that we would work well together; and I soon sensed a determination to do whatever was required of him to learn the craft of printmaking, which was his reason for coming all that way in the first place.

He took to printmaking with greater ease than any of the other twenty or so artists who had worked with me, and I fitted out a room for him above the Janus gallery, which became his home for almost a year. His work - a subtle blend of the traditional Western draughtsmanship and the profoundly wistful magic of the Orient was a combination which brought people from all over the North of England to admire, and buy his paintings and his prints. He had that rare gift of being able turn a simple rural scene into a memorable image: not quite English; not quite Japanese.

Tsuzuki had great musical gifts as well. He acquired a flute which he learned to play with great skill and we played duets together at Farrand House. He fell in love with my Steinway and asked me to teach him the basics. This I did, and to my amazement, within a matter of three months, he had learned enough to begin sight-reading!

He returned to Japan in the Spring of 1975, and was much missed by a community that warmed to his gentleness, and his exceptional skills as an artist. I succeeded, with his help, in producing before he left a six clour print which even the experts were unable to explain: never before, I believe, has watercolour been effected so subtly on a lithographic plate. Unfortunately the edition was very limited and there are just a few copies left. I have deposited five of his prints in the Department of Prints & Drawings in the British Museum, London.

He lives in Tokyo and teaches English at the Silasian High School. Many of his original paintings hang in the Renaissance Center at Sophia University. He has had several exhibitions in Tokyo galleries in the last few years.

TERRY DURHAM

Terry Durham was a friend of Stuart Walton, and soon learned of unusual developments taking place in Ilkley: not just the existence of a new printmaking studio, but a gallery devoted to contemporary artists working in Yorkshire. Terry was quite unlike any other artist I worked with: eccentric to the core! None of the techniques I had so far developed interested him in the least. With a decidedly unusual approach to drawing I realized that innovation would have to be the order of the day with Terry. The first experiments were dismal failures. He was the first artist I encountered who made me realize that to be a printmaker one had to get inside the head of the artist! That, of course, was what the printmakers in the traditional Paris ateliers understood well enough, but what had somehow got lost in England in the twentieth century. Terry showed me some of his original drawings and paintings, and I quickly realized that I needed a technique appropriate to the world of the imagination and dreams.

Terry was fascinated by the world of the Brontes: an eccentric Yorkshire family of writers and artists. I re-read the novels and studied what I could of the family in the museum at Haworth. I agreed that we should try to produce a series of studies of the Brontes: Charlotte, Emily, Anne, Patrick, Branwell. Terry’s rough sketches were quickly completed, and I realized that what would be needed was a technique that lent itself to sensitive use of pencil and crayon, combined with an imaginative use of colour. The final portfolio of prints – on marvelous Wookey Hole hand-made paper dating from the 1930’s – was ready in four weeks. They were first exhibited in York in the summer of 1974.

Terry subsequently produced a number of experimental lithographs which stretched my skill as a printmaker; including a few in which I was expected to replicate effects only possible in screen-printing! One of his most successful set of prints were portraits of eminent English writers: T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, W.H. Auden, D.H. Lawrence and W.B. Yeats.

He also produced a completely lithographed book for children: Angus Pangus and the One Jump Giant. It proved too adventurous for the book-trade - though in hindsight I am sure that the author of the Harry Potter books would have thought his drawings appealing!

BERNARD ETIENNE

Bernard Etienne remains one of my oldest friends. We first met at Toronto, where I was a graduate student, in 1956. He was teaching French, and I was teaching literature to engineers as a means of paying the fees for my graduate studies in medieval English literature and language. When I started Janus in 1973 I contacted him, and a year later he came to Ilkley staying in our house and working every day at the studio. Printmaking was not new to him as he was already by then experienced in copper plate printing, and taught at the Art College in Saumur, near Montsoreau his home.

Some years earlier I had produced for him an anthology of drawings at Scolar Press with an introduction by Pierre Mornand, Conservateur Honoraire at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Etienne relished the opportunity to experiment with completely novel lithographic techniques, one of which I developed for him, and which came as close as was possible to effects normally only possible with a burin and copper. Using this technique we produced a series of wonderful evocations of French and English landscape, and a stunning image (printed in five colours) of the Rose Window in Notre Dame.

Etienne seldom strayed from his preference for impressionism in representing  scenery, buildings or people. But his owl is, in my view, a superb drawing using a dentist’s tool for removing plaque!

Recently, Etienne has been appointed Official Artist to the French Navy. Dogged in later years by illness, he has not been active as an artist for some time now. But he still lives in his chateau in Montsoreau.

 HAROLD WHARFE

Harold Wharfe was an architect and taught in the School of Architecture at the University of Newcastle-on-Tyne. Though his architectural drawings were quite wonderful he escaped from the rigorous discipline of architectural drawing into a free and quite beguiling celebration of Wharfedale, where he had a country cottage in which he spent the summers. I now cannot recally how I got to know him: though we drove past his cottage near Burnsall every time we left Ilkley for Upper Wharfedale, where we lived between 1964 and 1970.

We only executed a few prints in 1974: but I still find them full of charm: his style was free of mannerism, and he responded to a technique I had devised for Joseph Pighills – whom he knew well and much admired.

BENITA BAMMER

Benita Bammer was, until her untimely death in 1980, the best known artist in the world of the Arabian horse. Her paintings were collected by horse-lovers both in Britain and on the Continent. She was an eccentric person who lived alone in Austria, surrounded by dogs, cats and horses; but her knowledge of the Arabian horse was well-known, and she was honoured by the Arabian Horse Society, and the International Arabian Horse Society.

One of the prints produced at Janus was a reproduction [not an original lithograph] of a painting belonging to my wife, Joanna. It was produced with great care and printed in five colours on hand-made papers. Copies were acquired by many members of the A.H.S. A few copies remain unsold.

Benita also took to lithography with extraordinary ease, and Janus published a few prints of Arabian horses, as well as striking representations of a tiger and a leopard. Only a few copies of these remain today. Her best – and most striking lithograph – was of the celebrated Arabian Iridos.

WENDY WILSON

Wendy Wilson was the only artist to work at the Janus studio from America. She was introduced to me by Cy Grant (the well known singer), and spent two weeks in the studio flat recreating images of life in the Fulani tribe of Nigeria, with whom she lived for several months, learning their language, their customs and beliefs.

Wendy’s preferred instrument for drawing was a fine-nibbed pen. I had, therefore, to create a completely new technique to render her images, drawn with lines so fine that they can hardly be detected by the eye without assistance without a magnifying glass.

Cy Grant came to her opening exhibition in Ilkley and spoke eloquently of her charm as a person, and her skill as an artist. Her prints were popular – but only with a discerning public. The paper I used for most of her images was made especially for me by the firm of Amatruda in Amalfi. I helped to found the Papermaking Museum there.

After Janus closed its doors in 1977 I tried to contact her, but she had either disappeared to somewhere in America, or returned to her beloved Nigeria. I have never been able to trace her whereabouts.

BARRY CHARLES

Barry Charles was a completely self-taught artist who drifted into the Janus Studio one day to find out what was going on! He showed me some of his intricate architectural drawings: but I wondered how I would manage to replicate on a lithographic plate the delicacy of touch which his work demonstrated.

It was hard work, and frustrated by many failures! But we did eventually succeed in a print which really pleased him: an image of the ruins of Bolton Abbey in Upper Wharfedale on the estate of the Duke of Devonshire.

We only produced three prints, and I have copies only of one. And then, one day he vanished as suddenly as he had appeared a few weeks earlier! I have tried, without success, to contact him many times since then.

PAUL BUCKINGHAM

Paul Buckingham was introduced to me by Eric Busby of the Goosewell Gallery in Menston, a village in which I had earlier (1965) established the Scolar Press. Eric knew almost everyone in the art world of Yorkshire (in particular) and of England (in general). He was a great admirer of Paul’s work and had arranged two exhibitions for him.

Paul was unashamedly devoted to capturing in his drawings and paintings the vanishing villages of Yorkshire and their traditional fairs and markets. The first lithograph he produced with me was a delightful freely-drawn sketch of Otley market on a typical Saturday. It was immensely popular with those who had a similar nostalgia for a way of life rapidly giving way to the supermarket.

I lost track of Paul when Janus closed, and we only produced a few prints: of which just a few copies remain.

LINDA BIRKINSHAW

Linda Birkinshaw arrived at Janus one day in 1975 with a portfolio if drawings of Hollywood stars. Not, I thought at first, an artist that fitted comfortably in my current stable. However, she was undoubtedly a Yorkshire artist, and undoubtedly had talent. She did not work from photographs per se, but based her drawings on many images available to her.

Being thoroughly professional she took to printmaking with greater ease than I could have imagined, and quite quickly produced some stunning lithographs of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and actors then achieving stardom.

Through the good services of a friend who mixed easily in the glitterati of Hollywood, several prints were shown to the stars: and I was to receive requests for copies from Sinatra and Marvin!

Linda’s drawing of Marilyn was virtually a sell-out: which is why there are so few copies left!

INGRID BROSIUS

Ingrid Brosius was a friend of the family long before Janus was established. Born in Germany, and trained in the hard German school of art, Ingrid spent much of her time between Germany, England and the beautiful villa she had on the Costa del Sol. Her drawings and paintings were decidedly not of the representational school, and yet her tight and economical style lent itself to printmaking. She made very few prints at Janus, most of them experimental. Sad to say we lost track of her, though she still maintains her Spanish villa. She currently lives in Vancouver. Sadder, perhaps, is the fact that there are only a handful of her prints left! The best we ever produced was her trees against a red ground.

JOSEPH PIGHILLS

Joseph Pighills is probably the best known Yorkshire artist who worked at the Janus Studio, and his paintings hang not only in a hundred Yorkshire homes but in the major galleries in Bradford and Leeds. When I first met him in 1973 he seemed completely uninterested in the Janus Studio. As he put it – with splendid Yorkshire bluntness: “art is about paint and canvas – not a mechanical device and paper!”

Nevertheless, he did one day come to Ilkley, and when I explained to him that I had developed a way of capturing crayon or conté he was intrigued enough to attempt a drawing on the plate. When copies came off the press in any colour he wanted, he was suddenly impressed enough to agree to do a series of lithographs of the Bronte country – he lived not far from the village of Haworth.

Joe’s lithographs (not completed until just before Janus closed) sold extremely well – especially to those who admired his work but could not afford to buy his paintings that were now selling for hundreds of pounds.

Editions of Joe’s prints were always small, and only a few remain. He died in 1978.

JOHN BUSBY

I met John Busby at the Goosewell Gallery in Menston, owned by his father Eric Busby. Eric introduced me to many artists, but not one of them had the demanding requirements of his son John. When I met him he was about to spend several weeks on the remote island of Aldabra in the Indian Ocean: an island which required special permission merely to visit, because of its strategic military importance. On his eventual return to England he showed me the portfolio of wonderful drawings he had made of birds and other wildlife on Aldabra. It did not take long for plans to develop to produce a portfolio of Aldabra prints. Because of John’s position in the Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds the portfolio was an instant success, and all copies were sold within three months. I have one set left: and I have no plans to part with it!

Since those days John has become one of the most highly respected bird artists in Britain, and has illustrated over thirty books, including Oxford’s book on penguins. His travels to observe and draw sea birds have taken him to New Zealand, the Falklands, and Galapagos.

John has played a leading role in the Artists for Nature Foundation since it started in 1991. He now lives near the Firth of Forth – where sea birds abound! In 2005 he published a splendid book entitled Drawing Birds, published by the Timber Press.

A few copies of some of the Aldabra portfolio prints remain.