LIDZEY, John

1935 - 2009

John Frederick Lidzey was born at Islington, London on 10 January 1935, son of George Harold Lidzey (28 April 1892-21 March 1976), a carpenter & joiner, and his wife Mabel Lovett or Levett (11 July 1891-1974), who married at Islington, London in 1926. John studied typographical design at the Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts, London, and Hornsey College of Art, then worked in an advertising studio, firstly as a typographer and later as a visualiser. For a decade, he was employed by art studios and design groups, during which time he became an award-winning member of the Society of Industrial Artists. In the late 1960s, he returned to Camberwell as a lecturer in typographic and graphic design, subsequently at Southwark College and in 1987 turned to painting and writing full time. A watercolourist, designer, writer, and teacher, Lidzey went on to win the Daler-Rowney award at the 1990 Royal Watercolour Society open show and a prize in the Singer and Friedlander/Sunday Times watercolour competition in London's Mall Galleries. He married at Willesden, London in 1960, Elsie Fildes (1932-1 November 2022) and looking for subjects further afield, they decided to relocate to a remote cottage 'The Dell', at Flixton, near Bungay, Suffolk. A pictorial record of their decade at Flixton remains in a multitude of much-admired Lidzey watercolours of cottage interiors and garden details which together form a portrait of rural and domestic bliss. About 2003 the couple made a final move to nearby Harleston, Norfolk where the artist wrote the last of his four best-selling how-to-paint books. Lidzey exhibited widely, in London at the Barbican; Royal Festival Hall; Cadogan Contemporary; the New Grafton Gallery; Medici Gallery; Thackeray Gallery; Bankside Gallery and Mall Galleries also at Linda Blackstone Gallery, Pinner. Even when firmly entrenched in East Anglia, he had a well-received 2002 display of London Underground watercolours with Abbott and Holder in Bloomsbury. He also exhibited at the John Russell Gallery in Ipswich and was still contributing a regular feature in 'The Artist' magazine during treatment for leukaemia. John Frederick Lidzey died on 5 April 2009 being survived by wife Elsie who died in 2022 and two children, David and Anna.
Website: http://johnlidzey.co.uk

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Works by This Artist