JAMES KELSO, ARTIST, SKIP THIS IF YOU'RE IN A HURRY
Soon after my birth, in London, the city was severely bombed. Too young to take up arms I took up paint brushes. This did not affect the course of the subsequent conflict. But it did affect the infant artist’s subject matter. I paint buildings. Buildings, for their part, tend to be blown up. Life continued in this vein until the all-clear sounded. The all-clear siren is a long continuous wail. I could do that. I wrote about my adventures in my autobiography, The Rising Son. And I’m grateful to those who bought a copy. Families come in useful at times. My story is this. I went to Sloane School, Chelsea, founded by Sir Hans Sloane, good man. I wasn’t there with him. He was before me. But we had a brilliant art master. He would look at your work - battlefields of every stripe - and say, and he said the same thing to all the boys: “You’ve a bit of a gap there, my boy, why not put in a bit of bush?” His nickname was Bit of Bush. To this day I occasionally do just that. After 40-odd years of London living, and the smoke now having cleared, I moved to Oxfordshire. First to Christmas Common, then to Watlington, where I now produce rather more country scenes. I work with acrylics, oils, watercolour and graphite on board and paper. I’ve exhibited in galleries throughout Britain, and also in America. I regularly submit to The Royal Academy as well as other London venues including The Royal Society of British Artists, The Mall Galleries, The Royal Festival Hall, and The London Stock Exchange. Paintings are in private collections in America, Australia, Britain, France and Sweden and prints have been sold worldwide. I am currently Artist in Residence at Watlington Public Library, yee haw!