Richard Dack

Richard Dack trained as a painter and printmaker at Camberwell School of Art, known for its rigorous regime where observation had to be right, and tone and colour relationships stuck exactly. 

These artistic disciplines stood him in good stead for his subsequent development as a painter.  For many years he combined this with a successful teaching career in Cambridgeshire and later in Devon, during which time he was able to exhibit regularly nationally.  He is now a full-time painter and printmaker.

Born and educated on the East Coast, his familiarity with the maritime environment has provided a recurrent theme in his work, which was produced primarily in oils, although the move to Devon and the discovery of Dartmoor lead to a large body of landscape centred work on paper, using combinations of pastel, acrylic, watercolour, and occasionally elements of collage.

Since leaving teaching his professional development has evolved significantly.  In 1998 he received the Maimeri Award, and also won the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights Award at the Royal Society of Marine Artists exhibition.  In the following year he won the Ariel Open in Devon.  He became a member of the R.S.M.A. in 2002, and in 2002 was elected as an artist member of the Royal West of England Academy.  His work has also been featured in Art Review and the Artist.

In recent years he has been able to give time the advancement of the visual arts in society, including playing a leading role in the creation of a large and prestigious exhibition space in a newly established Arts Centre in Kingsbridge, and curating its inaugural exhibition which comprised painting, sculpture and ceramics from prominent artists working in the South West.

Richard now lives in Suffolk and has found the maritime theme resurfacing strongly alongside his continuing landscape interests, and has readopted oils as his favoured medium.

Pursuing maritime subjects has taken him to many varied coastal locations, but he has always been drawn to Norfolk and Suffolk in particular, closely followed by the Channel Coast between Rye and Brighton.  It is the nature of the light found in these regions, but especially on the East Coast, that is one of his major concerns-something he first appreciated through the work of Edward Seago, while still at school.