Artist and gallery owner, who spent his early life in the South Shields and Jarrow area of County Durham. He won a scholarship to study art at Strawberry Hill College in 1952, but did not take up the offer. Instead, he served in the Merchant Navy; then in north Africa with the Army during National Service; worked for a Tyneside company and from 1960 exhibited throughout the United Kingdom. He had a solo exhibition at Morden Tower Book Room, Newcastle in 1962. In the mid-1960s he gave up business and, with his wife Willa, transformed a Civil Defence bunker in Springwell Park, Jarrow into the Bede Gallery, which became an important venue, showing a wide range of works, many by notable names ranging from Bill Brandt to Pablo Picasso. “To us, drawing, painting and sculpture deepen our awareness of life, they imbue the world around us with added meaning and give us a sense of ourselves in time and history.