Ray Atkins

Ray Atkins is a British figurative artist, member of the St Ives School & the London Group and educator.

Frank Auerbach, who was an occasional visiting tutor at Reading, commented on this in conversation with Atkins: 'I was very impressed by that fact that unlike most teachers [...] you seemed to be spending all your time in the room with the students.

In his own art, he produced a series of paintings of the industrial heritage of Cornwall: old mines, quarries and the open cast china clay pits around St Austell and on Bodmin Moor.

[6] In 2009 Atkins relocated, with his partner dancer and choreographer Hsiao Hwa Li, to a remote farmstead near Aspet, Haute-Garonne in the foothills of the French Pyrenees.

He found a suitable site at Milwall Dock and obtained permission from the Port of London Authority to paint there.

"[9] After moving to Cornwall, he developed his method of painting on large scale from direct observation of the landscape, leaving the works were left in situ until finished.

Painter Atkins showing visitors some of his paintings, summer 2022
View with forest from Atkins' garden, near Aspet, France, often the subject of his paintings