Born and bred as a country boy in 1953 in the then West Riding of Yorkshire, I had the privilege of a childhood spent playing in the fields and woods, rivers and lakesides around the farm where I was born and brought up. This fuelled an already inbred appreciation of the countryside, and the wonders and workings of it. Like most kids, I had always drawn and played with coloured pencils, but even at a very early age I was always striving to make the drawings better, and unlike most kids whose heroes were Batman and Superman and so forth, my heroes were Turner, Flint and Constable. I would wonder at the magic, mood and atmosphere that Turner managed to get into his skies, and marvelled how Constable managed to get the effect of his trees.
  
After a fairly conventional schooling, I studied at Lincoln College of Art and finally turned to the medium of watercolour. Watercolour is the traditional English medium because, as many artists have discovered, it captures the beautiful sense of atmosphere, haziness, dampness and watery skies of the British landscape. In the mid seventies there was no living to be made out of such art, so I turned my attention to catering and had a long and successful career in catering. Whilst still working in that trade, I was commissioned by the National Coal Board, as it was then, to paint a series of paintings of pits and pit villages. This led to a very long and fruitful alliance with the Coal Board and they would commission paintings of either dark and gloomy pit scenes, or dark overcast moorland scenes. Many of these paintings were presented to prominent MP’s of the time who visited various pit situations.

The Coal Board also sponsored my first one-man exhibition held at the Headrow Gallery, Leeds, in 1983. It was opened by the Lord Mayor of Leeds and featured on Yorkshire Television. This resulted in all 69 paintings being sold at preview. After that I held successful one-man or mixed exhibitions up and down the country.

In 1998 I was commissioned by Yorkshire Television to do a brooding type moorland scene for their TV soap “Emmerdale”. This I did under the scripted name of 'Nathan Summers’. After this I was asked by Tyne Tees Television to do a short series of painting programmes for their regional series. I made the first three and these proved to be so successful that we made a further nine.

We made in total 96 of those little programmes for Tyne Tees TV, they eventually went to half hours and now the half hour programmes are now being made for Discovery Real Time. These are going out not only all over the UK but all over Europe. The only reason I know they are going out all over Europe is because of the feedback that we get from such places as Netherlands, Portugal, and a little bit further than Europe...Australia! I can also be seen regularly on the Ideal World Shopping channel, Create and Craft. In addition to the TV work, I have been well known in recent years for my long running series in various glossy art magazines.

As well as being on TV, I am now one of the leading demonstrators for Daler Rowney and demonstrate all over the country. I am also making videos for a company called Teaching Art as well as venturing into producing my own videos and DVD’s. I have made two videos for the Japanese, German, Italian and Netherlands markets. I am now living in the wilds of Northumberland, writing, doing stage shows, workshops and demonstrating to art societies all over the country as well as holding painting holidays in the UK and Europe.      

 Email Charles