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.