IN CONVERSATION
While still studying at the Slade School of Art in London during the 1940s when he was in his 20s, Eric Rimmington was commissioned to paint a large mural at the Trafalgar Institute in Portsmouth, his home town. In 1950 he was chosen to exhibit in the Young Contemporaries annual exhibition – David Hockney famously rose to fame when he exhibited in the Young Contemporaries as a student in 1960.
After 30 years of teaching in art schools, Eric became a full-time artist, first producing abstract works that were often constructions made out of driftwood and debris. In the mid-1970s, he took a teaching job in America for a year where, he says: ‘I was taken away from the cushioning and comforts of habit. You could do all sorts of things that were not fashionable in Britain, and what might be thought of here as naiveté could also be seen as a lack of inhibition. On my return I felt the need to produce things that were complete, integral within themselves. The American experience gave me permission to simply look at the room I was in…’