Peter Bishop obituary | | The Guardian

My friend Peter Bishop, who died aged 68 of pneumonia, was an art teacher and landscape painter who specialized in painting the mountainous landscapes of North Wales, particularly Snowdonia. Using an inventive combination of materials and expansive, expressive, multi-layered colorizations, he followed in the lineage of artists such as Richard Wilson, James Dickson Innes and JMW Turner, if not exactly in their style.

Peter was born in Pembroke, South West Wales, to Christine (née Humphrey) and John Bishop, a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF. As a baby, he was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition that required extensive plastic surgery and corrective procedures in military hospitals, where he often found himself in wards with seriously injured airmen.

He was educated at the Society of Friends school in Sibford, Oxfordshire, where he learned to respect and understand Quaker philosophy.

He studied fine art at the Slade School of Fine Art in London (1972-75), then underwent teacher training at the Institute of Education, University of London (1976-77). He and I met when we started teaching art at Sydenham School, south-east London, in 1978. His conversation marked him as a serious artist, an impression confirmed when I visited his two-room apartment to discover that half of it had been given over to a studio crammed with paintings, a silkscreen, drawings and books on art.

In 1979, at a party, he met Jenny Beaumont, a teacher, and they married the following year and moved to Worcestershire, where Peter teaches at Bridley Moor High School in Redditch. In 1985, he resigned on a point of principle when he felt that art was unfairly marginalized from the school curriculum. His resignation was preceded by a move to Shropshire, bringing Peter closer to the mountains of North Wales, which were to be his subject for the rest of his life.

From 1985 he was a lecturer in fine art at Shrewsbury College of Arts and Technology, later combining this work with that of visiting lecturer in art history at the University of Birmingham and tutor guest in painting at the University of Wolverhampton School of Art. He obtained an MA with honors in Art History from the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design in 1995 and a PhD in Art History (Slade School and Aberystwyth University) in 2001. However, at this point his view that was rapidly deteriorating had strengthened his debut. retirement.

Although he was virtually blind and could only work in extreme close-ups, Peter continued to paint and his last major exhibition was in 2012 at the Machynlleth Museum of Modern Art.

Peter has regularly held solo exhibitions throughout his career and has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Royal Academy. His book, The Mountains of Snowdonia in Art, an in-depth study of the art of the region, was published in 2015.

In 2020 a pioneering eye surgery largely restored his sight and at the time of his death he was holding a retrospective exhibition of his work at Machynlleth.

He is survived by Jenny and their two daughters, Izzie and Katie.