Roy Turner Durrant (1925-1998)

Catalogue Note

A prolific painter and poet, Durrant was born on 4th October 1925 and raised in Lavenham, Suffolk. He began drawing aged 5 and exhibited his first painting in Bury St. Edmunds at the age of 12. From 1948 to 1952 he studied at the Camberwell School of Art, then in it’s post war hey-day.

Durrant had his first one-man show at the Guildhall, Lavenham in the late 1940's, and continued to exhibit regularly at the Royal Academy, Beaux Arts, Loggia Gallery and Belgrave Gallery, London annually throughout his life, including over 38 one-man shows. He was a fellow of the 'Free Painters & Sculptors Society', and a member of the ‘New English Art Club’

He lived in Chelsea during the 1950's, where he met and married, before moving to Cambridge. He continued to develop his early figurative style, abstracting and simplifying, drawing on a strong natural sense of design and draughtsmanship to push the boundaries of his paintings.

Durrant had many solo exhibitions around and within London, including Guildhall in 1948, the Cromwell Gallery in 1949, the Beaux Arts Gallery in 1950, Kensington Art Gallery in 1951, Coffee House, Trafalgar Square in 1952, Everyman Cinema, Hampstead in 1953, and the Artists' International Association Gallery London in 1953, 1957 and 1969. Further exhibitions have been held at the Roland Browse & Delbanco Gallery in London in 1954, New Vision Art Centre in both 1957 and 1960, A.I.A in 1957 and 1969, Grabowski Gallery London in 1959, New Gallery Ipswich in 1960, Phoenix Gallery Lavenham in 1960, Gainsborough's House in 1961, Cambridge University in 1969 and 1977, Cambridge Art and Design Gallery in 1974, and Caius College Cambridge in 1976. Durrant's work is held in many private collections including that of Prince Charles. and public collections, including The Imperial War Museum, Bradford City Art Gallery and Bailliol College, Oxford. He often exhibited the annual Royal Academy exhibition.