Donald Macauley
I was born in Cambridge in 1949 and grew up in the East Anglian countryside. I began painting at school aged 16 and my earliest efforts were semi-abstract but I soon discovered that I wanted above all to paint from life. I was at Reading University 1968 to 1972 and learned a lot from two very different painters-Ray Atkins and John Wonnacott, who have remained friends.I have in the past shown at the RA Summer Exhibition and the New English Art Club and Lynn Painter-Stainers shows and had a retrospective at the Grant Bradley Gallery, Bristol, in 2010. I admire many painters past and present but especially the fifteenth-century Italian and Flemish masters- if there ever was a golden age of painting, this is it for me.