He won the Academy’s Gold Medal in 1955 and the Students’ Diploma in 1956. As early as January 1954 he was doing illustrative work of Spanish peasants for Britannia and Eve magazine – which suggests he visited Spain early – and he also exhibited at the Academy, 1953–1956. The six works on Art UK include views of an unidentified village in Russia (1954), of Albufeira, Portugal (1961) and Casares in Spain (1960); another, of a street in Ibiza (1954), exhibited at the Piccadilly Gallery, has also been reported in private hands.

While a student, Taylor lodged in Kensington with the parents of a friend called Grimes, whom he had met at Heatherley’s, but this presumably ended when he married in 1955. His wife, Muriel Ann Griffin (1932–1989) came from Epsom, Surrey, and they had four children (three sons and a daughter) born between 1956 and 1964. His own father came from Tavistock and died there in January 1965 at Thorn Cottage, Burn Lane, Brentor, where – either before or following his death – Thomas established a studio. (This may also have been to support his widowed mother, though when she died is not yet known.)

Taylor seems to have worked as both a painter and a freelance graphic designer, gaining an early reputation as the latter. He illustrated the South Coast Guide in the series of 48 ‘Shilling Guides’ published by Shellmex/BP in 1963–1964, all of which were done by leading commercial artists of the day. He may also have been involved in the previous and more expensive Shell county guides, since a multiple-image ‘montage’ painting of Devon by him (as Swimmer) featured as an advertisement for that one in the Illustrated London News of 11th April 1959. Apart from exhibiting at the Academy and Piccadilly Gallery, he also showed at the Redfern Gallery and had at least four one-man exhibitions: the fourth – of landscapes and still-lifes – was at the Trafford Gallery, 119 Mount Street, London, in May 1966. His work is known to have been bought by Leicester City Council, though nothing of theirs by him features on Art UK.

Taylor and his family later moved to 34 The Street, Great Livermere, Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, where he became a part-time lecturer in art and graphics at Suffolk College of Higher Education, Ipswich. By the time of his death in 1983 he had also done titling and other artwork for film and video production, including for all the four national television channels then operating. This included title artwork for the BBC serial Pennies from Heaven (written by Dennis Potter, 1978), and its mini-serialisation of Trollope’s The Barchester Chronicles (1982); also the P. D. James ‘Adam Dalgleish’ series Death of an Expert Witness (1983) and Shroud for a Nightingale (broadcast in 1984). Other programmes in which he was involved included Sale of the Century, Enterprise and ‘the old-style “Top of the Pops” working alongside pop celebrities such as Slade and Ringo Starr.’ (Bury Free Press, 21st October 1983).

Sadly, he died in a car accident in 1983.

Summarised from Art UK’s Art Detective discussion ‘Can you tell us more about the artist Thomas Swimmer (b.1932)?’