A Bit About Alastair!

ALASTAIR RILEY MPhil

Once a postman, sheet metal worker, Primary School teacher, then head teacher Alastair also worked for Exeter University as an advisor before serving in an 8/8 shop and working for Somerset Wildlife Trust in order to restart printmaking in 2002.  It became a second career.

He left the UK to work as an artist in 2006 before returning briefly, firstly to a studio in Kent and then to the Isle of Wight in 2012. From mid 2016 his studio was in the southern Creuse, the Limousin in France.   In 2020 he moved to the Vendée before eventually returning to England.

Alastair Riley ArtistHe trained for 3 years as an artist printmaker whilst also training as a teacher in the late 70s.

A quiet, shy man he slowly established a following for his works.

Most compositions result from time spent outside – usually birdwatching – and he has something of a reputation for finding the images everyone feels they ‘ought to already know!’

His work has been critically received and termed ‘representational’, a word with which he is comfortable.  It is a term ideally suited to the work of printmakers.

Sometimes wildlife subjects occur and maybe the occasional pussycat but by and large compositions are intended to be gentle and calming in a world that’s anything but. Landscapes feature a lot, also the sea.

Brought up in Castle Hedingham, Essex where Eric Ravilious lived and worked Alastair remains influenced by the work of the Bardfield group – in particular Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Bernard Cheese and Sheila Robinson.  Alastair also studied the life and work of Samuel Palmer whose works remain an influence along with those of JMW Turner, Caspar David Friedrich and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

He is a member of the Fry Gallery at Saffron Walden but doesn’t go as often as he’d like – even to combine it with seeing Colchester United play!  He loves cats, is a keen birdwatcher and enjoys good French wine, real ale, chats with his son in Australia, wandering in to a non league football game but most of all spending time with Louise, often in the garden which is the ‘new canvas!’

2025

I Like To Give

Organisations Supported.

In the past few years:-

  • Somerset Wildlife Trust
  • Alderney Wildlife Trust
  • Alderney Wildlife Trust
  • La Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux
  • Movember
  • The island charity of the IoW High Sheriff
  • Meningitis UK
  • Habitat for Humanity
  • Cats Protection League
  • Les Amis des Chats, Vix, Vendée.
  • The ‘Lions’, Looe
  • CR UK
  • Marie Curie Foundation
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