- Barry Driscoll
Barrington Lionel "Barry" Driscoll (
December 15 1926 –April 30 2006 ) was a British painter, wildlife artist and sculptor.In 1960 Driscoll painted three large murals in the
London Zoo . A year later he illustrated the inaugural brochure for theWorld Wildlife Fund . By the mid-1960s Barry's work was appearing regularly in the national press, and he had his own "Sunday Express " wildlife column. In 1970 Time-Life commissioned him to do a series of paintings of fauna inArizona .Early years
Born in
Camberwell , Driscoll was one of four sons of a printer on the "Daily Express ". DuringWorld War II his family moved toShropshire , where, truant from school, the young Driscoll roamed the countryside and began making sketches from nature. He was a keen reader, and in particular cherishedGilbert White 's "Natural History of Selborne".Driscoll was conscripted into the army, and was commissioned into the
Royal Army Service Corps in 1947. He served as a subaltern inIndia , where he "lost" the convoy of which he was in charge, and was severely reprimanded. He later served in thePalestine Mandate ,Egypt , andNorthern Ireland . In 1948 he enrolled atSt Martin's School of Art on the British equivalent of theGI Bill . After he graduated from St Martin's with a national diploma in design,, he won a place at theRoyal College of Art .He married Kiffi Bowerley, a fellow St Martin's student, in 1951; they had three children (one of whom, Guy, died in 1995). They divorced in 1979.
He launched himself on a career as an illustrator, which stretched on into the 1970s and included many national press campaigns.By 1982 he became a sculptor, enjoying the technique of working in a three-dimensional medium. He declared that sculpture was easy when compared with painting.
He made many trips to
Italy to oversee his sculptures, forged by the Mariani foundry atPietrasanta . His son, Falcon, married an Italian woman, Sabina Coppola, in 2001, further copper-fastening Barry Drsicoll's love of Italy.Exhibitions
Driscoll was under less pressure to exhibit than many other artists. He did show with the
Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA), of which he was a member, and with the Phoenix Gallery inLavenham ,Suffolk , although he was not represented by any major commercial gallery. In 2002, he was the principal sculptor in a wildlife show of two- and three-dimensional works which originated at the Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Antica e Moderna inTurin, Italy . It travelled then toBarcelona , then back to the Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA) in England.Death
He died of cancer, aged 79, and was survived by his former wife, Kiffi; his children, Pippa and Falcon, and by Leila Kouros, Driscoll's later partner in life.
External links
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1774712,00.html
* http://www.artnet.com/artist/677592/barry-driscoll.html
* http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article624197.ece
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