Your Gallery: Graham McQuade

Dec 5 2012

Each week the Midweek Visiter and Formby Times will turn the spotlight on a local artist or photographer. You can submit your photographs at www.southportvisiter.co.uk/yourgallery or www.formbytimes.co.uk/yourgallery. We begin with Southport artist Graham McQuade...

Name: Graham McQuade

Age: 58

Location: Southport

I STARTED drawing around 1992 in order to occupy my time on holiday. With a young daughter wanting to spend her days on the beach, exploring rock pools and building sandcastles, I found that I now had a little time on my hands.

I left school with no qualifications in art and read chemistry at university.

Whilst working in the chemical industry I collected watercolour paintings. It was, therefore, natural that this beach hobby of drawing led me to paint in watercolours.

I signed up for evening classes and slowly made progress in watercolour.

Then the government decided to only fund courses which led to a qualification. Now students had to practise any media that the examiners chose. At this stage I was still struggling with watercolour.

I joined the Ainsdale and Birkdale Art Club, a self financed group of artists who paint in any media they choose. I also joined a watercolour class run by Jeremy Ford, the Society for All Artists president, who teaches locally in Southport. I developed my watercolour skills, helped by going off annually on courses with well known watercolour painters.

Eventually I started to enter work for exhibitions and found that people were prepared to purchase some of it.