Terry Chipp Art

There was little sign of an artistic career in Chipp’s early years.
“I grew up in a Yorkshire mining village.  My childhood was content and maybe rather uneventful.  There was very little money to spare and my early years were spent in my grandparents’ over-crowded house along with my parents and my mother’s younger sisters.  Expectations in the village were low. Girls were expected to work in shops and boys to go down the pit.  Fortunately, I passed the exam to go to the local grammar school where my aspirations were raised.  The countryside was never far from home and I spent many days walking or cycling through the fields with my friends.  As a teenager I played guitar in a highly unsuccessful pop group and became involved with a local amateur dramatics company.  There I met a girl who has been by my side ever since.”

Chipp always enjoyed making pictures and still clearly remembers some of the paintings he made in primary school from the age of 6 and the prints of paintings by Van Gogh and Constable that hung on the classroom walls.  When he got to the grammar school with its proper art lessons he was hooked.  His art teacher was very pleasant and close to retirement but, more significantly, he had a storeroom full of his paintings which he worked on in lunchtimes and after school.  This was the first time that Chipp had seen an adult making art and the effect was life changing.
 
“At the age of 13 I declared my intent to become an art teacher because I knew that I wanted art to be a part of my life.  I had no concept that anyone could be just an artist.”

From then on he spent every break, lunchtime and ‘study lesson’ in the art room. Mr Leadley laid the foundations for Chipp’s love of figurative and representational art.  His teacher’s serene landscapes and characterful portraits were impressive, but it was often the smaller works showing the simple beauty of a blossoming twig or a tuft of dry grass breaking through snow that made the biggest impression.  It was through his encouragement that Chipp entered his first exhibition and sold his first painting at the age of 17.

On leaving school Chipp enrolled on a Foundation course at Doncaster Art College before going on to a Teacher Training course at Bede College, Durham University specialising in Art and Design.  In the final year of that course a professional artist joined the staff as a new tutor and introduced a new level of aspiration for Chipp’s artwork.  The tutor enthusiastically encouraged an exploration of the qualities of painting materials to discover their possible uses beyond the usual.  This approach proved extremely useful throughout his teaching career and especially in his first post.  This was in a small village school where there was no timetable and creativity was the order of every day.  There followed 30 years of teaching in primary, middle and secondary schools including 6 years in an advisory role, training teachers to teach art.  During the advisory work Chipp completed a Masters’ Degree in Art and Design Education.  

At every stage through his teaching career Chipp continued with his own artwork exhibiting and selling paintings across the North of England.  He developed a reputation for his plein-air watercolour landscapes and received recognition from the British Watercolour Society and many commissions.