Painter, artist in mixed media and teacher, born in Hoyland, Barnsley, Yorkshire, where he grew up and settled. His father, grandfather and father-in-law were all miners, but Whittaker had a distaste for the job and his parents encouraged his artistic ambitions. Attended Barnsley College of Art and was admitted to Royal College of Art contemporary with Norman Stevens and David Hockney. Spurned the Pop Art movement, his student works being gritty northern industrial scenes. Taught in schools and colleges in Bradford, Dewbury and Sheffield. Whittaker said that influences and preoccupations in his mature works were “many and varied, cerebral and visual – land surfaces, maps, aerial photographs, geological diagrams, museums, text and book forms … The painting is a new place, a new reality with its own vital presence.