Painter and teacher, born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, where he attended the local School of Art, 1946–8. He then studied at Royal College of Art, 1948–51, after that for 25 years teaching widely in London. In the early 1970s Hirst also taught at Philadelphia College of Art and York University, Toronto, from 1976–87 being principal lecturer in painting at Kingston Polytechnic. Hirst was artist-in-residence at Sussex University in 1966, five years after his first one-man show, at Drian Galleries. Other solo shows included Sussex University, the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne and a retrospective at Angela Flowers Gallery in 1979. Hirst was a serious artist whose work, moving in appearance from naïve figuration towards abstraction over the years, had a number of preoccupations, travel being important.
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On graduating in 1951, he destroyed all his student work apart from a small self-portrait. Instead of visiting major galleries, he studied exhibits in the Natural History and Science Museums. In the early 1950s he journeyed through France to Spain and was much influenced by the Lascaux cave paintings, discovered Catalonia and for the next two decades spent part of each year there. In 1964 he studied Islamic architecture in Morocco, evident in paintings he then produced, while the landscape of his native Yorkshire remained important. Native American art, seen while teaching in Toronto, spawned some of Hirst’s most impressive heraldic images. Cancer of the bladder, diagnosed in the mid-1970s and followed by debilitating surgery, was a serious mid-career interruption. A visit to the Far East in 1985 next prompted some fine pictures, notably the Garden Metaphor Kyoto series. The landscape around Church Norton, near Pagham Harbour, produced paintings by Hirst at his most self-critical, version upon version being rejected before the final image. A series made in Andalusia from the mid-1990s was also important. Took part in numerous exhibitions internationally. Later solo shows included Flowers East, 1995 and 1999, and Flowers West, Santa Monica, California, 2001. Arts Council, Contemporary Art Society, Tate Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum and many other British and foreign collections hold examples. Lived in Chichester, Sussex.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
