Beautiful anemones painted oil on board.
Fred Cuming (b1930) in London and trained at the Sidcup School of Art between 1945 and 1949. After National Service he studied at the Royal College of Art for four years and was awarded the Abbey Travel Scholarship to visit Rome.
In 1969 he was elected an Associate Member of the Royal Academy, becoming a full member in 1974. Fred has been a member of the NEAC since 1960 and in 2004 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Literature at the University of Kent in Canterbury.
Fred has exhibited widely since his first one-man show at Thackeray Gallery, London, and has work in private and public collections in fifteen countries. In 2001 he was given the honour of being the featured artist in the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, an entire gallery being dedicated to his paintings.
Fred’s most recent exhibition was at the Adam Gallery in London, continuing for some weeks at their equally prestigious gallery in Bath. Although fashions come and go in the art world, the popularity of Fred’s atmospheric landscapes and dramatic cloud formations does not dwindle and he continues to convey a visual magic by highlighting moments from the changing landscape around us.
In writing about his work, Fred has said, "I am not interested in pure representation, my work is about responses to the moods and atmospheres generated by landscape, still life or interior. I am interested in the developments of 20th Century painting, in abstraction, that has been present in all movements, and in new ideas and art forms. My philosophy is that the more I work the more I discover. Drawing is essential as a tool of discovery; skill and mastery of technique are also essential, but only as a vocabulary and a means towards an idea. I struggle to keep an open mind."
Fred takes an everyday scene and, through his subtle approach and through focusing on light and tone, he lends it an elevated atmosphere. His subjects are often oriented around the mood of the sea, skies, harbours, marshland, ships and figures wandering on beaches; Fred is constantly absorbing everything that is around him. Equally, interiors and still lifes are often sources of inspiration. Fred lives with Audrey, his wife of nearly fifty years, near Rye in East Sussex. They have two children and five grandchildren.
Source: Fredcuming.com
