An award-winning artist who recently moved to Tenby, has been inspired to paint a series of works depicting his time in the resort which he has called ‘A Town of Smiles’.

Andrew Piesley BA MA (RCA) studied fine art and printmaking at Camberwell School of Art in 1971, and a further three years study at the Royal College of Art, where his personal tutor was English pop artist Sir Peter Blake, best known for co-creating the sleeve design for the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

“I was very fortunate to be taught by some of the leading figures in British painting,” explained Andrew, whose peripatetic and some times picaresque journey towards artistic self-discovery started in Hastings where he was born in 1953.

He studied life drawing with Sam Rabin (artists, opera singer and 1930s film actor) at the Bournemouth College of Art, and then on Sam’s recommendation Andrew took himself off to London to study painting and drawing from Euan Uglow and Paul Huxley at Camberwell School of Art.

His next teacher was Sir Peter Blake at the Royal College of Art who first described Andrew’s work as “like living in the twilight world”.

Andrew’s interest in painting and printmaking was fired by a major exhibition at London’s Hayward Gallery of the work of the great Norwegian existentialist artist Edvard Munch, powerfully challenging in his black and white graphics as his emotionally charged oil paintings.

Since his first solo show at the Grove Community Centre Dorchester in 1985, Andrew’s work has been exhibited regularly in the UK and abroad, in places such as Vienna, Paris, Germany and Laguna Beach, California.

In 1987, his ‘Mixed Emotions at Midnight’ won second prize at the Cleveland UK Eight International Drawing Biennale’ and was bought for the Cleveland County Museum Collection.

Andrew moved to Tenby from Southern England in June 2014, after 26 years as a fine art, and art history lecturer.

“I had known the Tenby Colley family for over 20 years and it was through their encouragement and support that I finally made the decision to move here,” he explained.

“Within three weeks of moving to Lorne House on St. Julian Street and after much hesitation, I applied for a job in the newly opening ‘Boutique Bistro’ which was situated next door to me.

“The warmth and kindness shown to me by the owners Nick and Katie and the staff surpassed all my expectations of being a stranger in a new town and over the next 15 months the bistro would become my extended Tenby family,” he continued.

Andrew decided to begin a series of drawings of staff and customers at the restaurant, with the intention of having a bistro wall of drawings, and after completing over 20 of them, decided to make it into an oil painting incorporating as many of the staff as he could.

“Not only is it now a nostalgic record of my time at the Boutique Bistro, but it also serves to record my first year in Tenby and all the wonderful people I have met and remained friends with,” remarked Andrew.

“As I painted it, I thought of Sir Peter Blake’s Sgt Pepper album cover and Richard Dadd’s ‘Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke’. For me this is a very personal painting and I will treasure the memories within it always,” he said.

The next place that Andrew took on was the Tenby Rock Fudge and Sweets shop, a painting he describes as a “hedonistic cacophony of colour from floor to ceiling”, before making Tenby Bookshop his third in the series.

“It is a visual feast, upstairs and down, of books, toys and all manner of signs colour and pattern, so I painted it as a series of multiple viewpoints.

“These three paintings originally were a diversion from my main fine art practice. However, they came about in my search to find a way of depicting my first year in Tenby,” added Andrew, who said that he wanted to portray the many people he has met, to show their kindness, friendship and generosity which confirmed to him that Tenby was ‘A Town of Smiles’ - the name given to his series.

Andrew, whose last exhibition ran at Upton House in Poole, in 2014, before he moved to Tenby, is hoping that his latest paintings, part of an ongoing project, can be exhibited locally in the near future.

Anyone interested in Andrew’s work and would like to know more can contact him on 07533263467 or call in at 7 Lorne House, St. Julians Street.