Colin Self

Colin E Self (born 1941 in Rackheath, Norfolk) is an English Pop Artist whose work has addressed the theme of Cold War politics.

As a student at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1961 to 1963 Colin Self received encouragement for his drawings and collages from the artists David Hockney and Peter Blake.

Following his trip to the United States in 1965 he produced a series of drawings based on American nuclear fall-out shelters, Art Deco cinema interiors and of hot dogs, which he described as being ‘as important a 20th century development as (say) a rocket.’ His highly personal and distinctive style of drawing led the artist Richard Hamilton to call him ‘the best draughtsman in England since William Blake.’ During the 1960s Self showed with the Robert Fraser Gallery, London.

Drawing images from a variety of commercial sources, he created the Power and Beauty series of screenprints (1968) at Editions Alecto while his etching suite Prelude to the 1000 Temporary Objects of Our Time (1970–71) sought to provide a unique record of society in the event of its possible destruction[2] Suspicious of the commercial art world Self worked in isolation during the 1970s, seeking a sense of solace through the production of atmospheric watercolours and charcoals of the landscapes of his native county Norfolk, and Scotland.

Some of these works such as ‘Burning Man Jumping from Building’ (1983) and ‘New York Disaster’ (1998) appear remarkably prescient in the light of events such as the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, while others create lighter, often humorous narratives from found material in everyday life – an extension of the language of Pop art.