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Humphrey Ocean
Humphrey Ocean RA (born 22 June 1951) is a contemporary British painter.
Humphrey Ocean was born Humphrey Anthony Erdeswick Butler-Bowdon, on 22 June 1951 in Sussex. He went to Ampleforth College and in 1967 went to Tunbridge Wells School of Art for two years, going on to do a Foundation Course at Brighton College of Art and DipAD Painting at Canterbury College of Art.
It was at Canterbury that he was taught by Ian Dury, then a painter. From 1971 he was bass player with the band Kilburn and the High Roads formed at Canterbury with Dury. They opened for The Who on its Christmas tour in 1973, after which Ocean resigned from music with the notable exception of recording the single "Whoops-a-Daisy" written by Ian Dury and Russell Hardy, for Stiff Records in 1978.
Ocean's earliest notable work was for record album covers and sleeves; in particular, he contributed pencil drawings for the cover and lyric insert for 10cc's 1975 album The Original Soundtrack, and inner-sleeve art for Paul McCartney and Wings' 1976 album Wings at the Speed of Sound.
In 1983, Ocean painted Paul McCartney's portrait as part of the first prize in the 1982 Imperial Tobacco Portrait Award with his painting Lord Volvo and his Estate and the following year painted the poet Philip Larkin's portrait, also for the National Portrait Gallery, a work described by the novelist Nick Hornby as "unanswerable".
In 1988 Ocean travelled to Northern Brazil with the American anthropologist Stephen Nugent, a lecturer at the University of London, eager to expose colonial caricatures of the region. Their subsequent book, Big Mouth: The Amazon Speaks, was published by Fourth Estate (HarperCollins) in 1990, and features evocative illustrations of Brazil. In 1999 the National Maritime Museum commissioned Ocean to paint a picture of modern maritime Britain. Throughout the 1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century, Ocean's paintings were exhibited in many of the leading museums in the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Ocean was Artist-in-Residence at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, culminating in how's my driving, an exhibition linking 17th-century Dutch genre paintings with south London suburbia. That year he was awarded an honorary fellowship by Canterbury College of Art where he had been a student between 1970-1973. In 2009 he worked on an Artangel project Life Class: Today's Nude directed by Alan Kane, shown on Channel 4 television. He also painted Catherine Hughes in her role as principal of Somerville College, Oxford.
Ocean came to prominence with his exhibition A handbook of modern life (2012–13) at the National Portrait Gallery London curated by Rosie Broadley who wrote:
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Humphrey Ocean
Humphrey Ocean RA (born 22 June 1951) is a contemporary British painter.
Humphrey Ocean was born Humphrey Anthony Erdeswick Butler-Bowdon, on 22 June 1951 in Sussex. He went to Ampleforth College and in 1967 went to Tunbridge Wells School of Art for two years, going on to do a Foundation Course at Brighton College of Art and DipAD Painting at Canterbury College of Art.
It was at Canterbury that he was taught by Ian Dury, then a painter. From 1971 he was bass player with the band Kilburn and the High Roads formed at Canterbury with Dury. They opened for The Who on its Christmas tour in 1973, after which Ocean resigned from music with the notable exception of recording the single "Whoops-a-Daisy" written by Ian Dury and Russell Hardy, for Stiff Records in 1978.
Ocean's earliest notable work was for record album covers and sleeves; in particular, he contributed pencil drawings for the cover and lyric insert for 10cc's 1975 album The Original Soundtrack, and inner-sleeve art for Paul McCartney and Wings' 1976 album Wings at the Speed of Sound.
In 1983, Ocean painted Paul McCartney's portrait as part of the first prize in the 1982 Imperial Tobacco Portrait Award with his painting Lord Volvo and his Estate and the following year painted the poet Philip Larkin's portrait, also for the National Portrait Gallery, a work described by the novelist Nick Hornby as "unanswerable".
In 1988 Ocean travelled to Northern Brazil with the American anthropologist Stephen Nugent, a lecturer at the University of London, eager to expose colonial caricatures of the region. Their subsequent book, Big Mouth: The Amazon Speaks, was published by Fourth Estate (HarperCollins) in 1990, and features evocative illustrations of Brazil. In 1999 the National Maritime Museum commissioned Ocean to paint a picture of modern maritime Britain. Throughout the 1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century, Ocean's paintings were exhibited in many of the leading museums in the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Ocean was Artist-in-Residence at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, culminating in how's my driving, an exhibition linking 17th-century Dutch genre paintings with south London suburbia. That year he was awarded an honorary fellowship by Canterbury College of Art where he had been a student between 1970-1973. In 2009 he worked on an Artangel project Life Class: Today's Nude directed by Alan Kane, shown on Channel 4 television. He also painted Catherine Hughes in her role as principal of Somerville College, Oxford.
Ocean came to prominence with his exhibition A handbook of modern life (2012–13) at the National Portrait Gallery London curated by Rosie Broadley who wrote: