Peter was born on 1st November 1931 and died on 7th August 2017.
His myriad talents included photography, sculpture, cartooning, watercolour painting, playing piano and guitar, singing, carpentry, book publishing, cookery and amateur dramatics.
He spent the latter part of his life with his wife Sue in a thatched cottage in the rural English countryside where he created his artworks.
He didn't always lived in such bucolic surroundings – he was once a part of the frenzied world of advertising in London, where he was responsible for many successful advertising campaigns. One of the most memorable of his creations is the legendary Captain Birdseye of fish-finger fame.
Peter was born in Cardiff and educated at Leighton Park School in Reading. His father had visions of his only son becoming a musician or a doctor, but fate had something different mapped out.
While Peter was on National Service in Surrey he had a life-changing conversation with an advertising copywriter during a Bach choir rehearsal. She told him he would probably enjoy being art director.
He took her advice (his father never forgave him) and spent three years studying art at the London School of Printing. His first job was with the largest advertising agency in the world at that time – J Walter Thompson – where he worked alongside such celebrated photographers as Lord Snowdon and Norman Parkinson, and developed his continuing passion for black and white photography.
He later moved on to join another advertising agency – Allen, Brady & Marsh – where among other campaigns he invented the Griffin cartoon for Midland Bank, and found he had a talent for cartooning. When the agency changed hands, Peter moved to Berkshire and away from advertising to do freelance photography and cartooning for various clients.
In 1995 he moved to Devon and began to focus his energies on his private creative outlet of the past 30 years – his sculpture artworks. Inspired by Picasso and the surrealists, his assemblages of everyday objects are quirky, witty and unusual artworks which have been much admired in gallery exhibitions in Devon and Berkshire.
Peter's last home was Somerset where he was also much admired.
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He was also partly responsible for bringing three lovely children into the world from his first marriage to Valerie, an accomplished fine artist. His offspring would like to take this opportunity to apportion some of the blame to him for their inherited eclectic talents, and to say how sad they are that he has gone.