IN CONVERSATION
A Good Drying Day, oil on canvas, 17×21in (43×53.5cm).
Anthony Yates is an accomplished and intuitive painter. Although he was unable to attend art school he began his artistic career aged just 16 as an employee in a commercial art studio in Edgbaston, Birmingham. ‘I learned the trade of commercial art from the senior artists, but producing advertisements for industrial firms around the Midlands wasn’t what I wanted to do. Luckily I met commercial artist Sidney Homer who was a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA), and who encouraged me in my endeavours to be a painter. He advised me to go to London and look at the work of Bernard Dunstan RA. I showed my first oil on the walls of the RBSA Gallery in New Street in 1979.’