Colin Moss: Life Observed

From the Publisher

With compassion, but without sentimentality, Colin Moss has been drawing and painting ordinary people going about their lives since the 1930s. In the pub, at work, or in the most mundane domestic situations, he has produced a penetrating and at times powerful record of social change.
Through her own research and conversations with Colin Moss, his family, friends and former pupils of the Ipswich Art School, Chloe Bennett has skilfully compiled both a biography and an appreciation of this remarkably versatile artist whose talent for capturing for posterity contemporary character cannot be doubted. Because of the nature of his art this is as much a piece of social history as it is a book on one painter and his pictures.
This study of his life and work is prefaced by a telling introduction by his late friend Mervyn Levy. Mervyn recalled the time, when they were both students at the Royal College of Art, that Colin refused to open the door to Dylan Thomas (drunken!). "Everybody wants to claim association, that they knew Dylan Thomas... there's Colin with Dylan outside his window and he wouldn't let him in!"

From the Author

During the book's compilation I found myself on an incredible journey with Colin Moss as he re-visited each chapter of his life.
Whether we look at Colin's most recent work or that produced some sixty years ago, it is impossible not to admire his consistent energy and application that never diminished until the last few years of his life. He was always true to himself, un-swayed by the vogue for abstractionism, with which, he admitted, he felt unable to empathise. Through his acute observations of ordinary people, he immortalised the details of contemporary life, from pre-war Britain to the punk era of the 1980s and the ever-present destitution on the streets during the 1990s. I believe that his work is of enormous value to social as well as art historians. Colin Moss's vision, revealing both the light and dark sides of everyday human existence, is gritty and compellingly honest.

About the Author

Chloe Bennett was the curator of fine and applied art at Ipswich Borough Council Museums and Galleries for fourteen years before diversifying into a variety of jobs within the art and heritage sector in Suffolk. She is now curator of The History of Advertising Trust Archive (www.hatads.org.uk). Chloe's other books include the definitive "Suffolk Artists 1750-1930" (Images, Ipswich Borough Council, 1991.)