George Busby MCSD RBSA GRA FRSA
(1926-2005)

 George Busby was born in Birmingham in 1926. For a number of years he worked in the display industry as a graphic designer and illustrator. In 1978 he decided to leave the advertising world to take up painting full time. He has been commissioned to illustrate calendars for Courage, the Abbey National Building Society, British Gas and the Amoco Oil Company and he has had his work published in card form by Kingsmead Publications.

It is the West Midlands that are home to George Busby and from there he gathers most of the reference for his work. The fast changing industrial landscapes of this region are captured in his paintings. It is the old fashioned shops, streets of houses and run down areas that are being replaced by soulless housing estates and concrete jungle that George is trying to preserve for posterity in his pictures. Studies of people at work, shopping, going to the football through the rain, their tired yet important existence captured with a surity of line and draughtmanship which are often touching yet never sentimental.

His work is represented in the National Library of Wales, and in numerous private collections throughout the UK.

George died on the 7th November 2005 at 5pm peacefully in his sleep after developing cancer.

Hugh Chevins ARA

(1931 - 2003)

Hugh Chevins was born in Nottinghamshire in 1931, He studied Painting and History of Art at Twickenham at the Twickenham School of Art before continuing his studies at the Royal Academy where he was awarded both the Ivory and Bronze Medals.
He exhibited throughout the UK, has had a number of One Man Shows in the West End and his work is in the permanent collections of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the Fund for the Republic Museum in New York.
Hugh spent many years in the commercial art world where he was commissioned by ICI, British Rail and Brooke Bond to mention but a few, at the same time producing a host of finely detailed book illustrations.
Over the years his public commissions have included a series of oil paintings for the Science Museum, a fifteen by thirty foot mural for a London School and the restoration of the domed altar ceiling of St. Saviours, Lewisham.

Hugh retired from the commercial world and concentrated on full time painting. He worked entirely in gouache and oil which gave his work an intensity of colour and depth. His studies of land and town scapes all have an emotive edge. The characters seen, the buildings, the atmosphere are all lovingly portrayed with a wryness of wit and a surety of style that immediately attracts the eye.
Hugh died on 18^th Dec 2003 from a heart attack. He had been ill and unable to paint for some time prior to his death. He had moved in 2003 and had a new studio built, sadly that he was never able to use it.