For Dad
Chris was one of the kindest, most thoughtful and most genuine people you could hope to meet — a devoted husband to Janet, father to Jonathan, Andrew and Jane, grandfather to six and great-grandfather to two, and a friend to dozens. Born in Hull in 1940, a year into the war, he lived most of his life in the village of Wawne, where he and Janet moved as newlyweds in 1965. He taught in Hull's schools for over thirty years; and everyone who knew him says the same thing — that he was a true gentleman.
The painting began in the village, with the Wawne Art Group and his friend and mentor Joyce Birch, and never stopped. On early retirement he threw himself into it properly — an A-level at Wilberforce, the foundation course at Hull College, pottery and printmaking and surrealism, and a lifelong painting friendship with Rob Jones, the two of them putting the world to rights in the conservatory as much as they painted. He carved rocking horses too — more than ten of them, thousands of hours of work — and gave most of them away to family and friends. He painted for family, for friends, for neighbours — always quietly, always modestly, rarely showing anyone what he'd made.
Much of the work on this site came out of days spent together — trips to the Lakes and Scotland climbing mountains, and later, gentler field trips to the moors and the coast: Jon setting up a camera, Dad sketching or photographing scenes to paint at home. In 2017, Dad asked Jon to photograph some of his paintings for a book. Jon assumed it would be twenty or thirty and done in an afternoon — but painting after painting kept appearing from somewhere in the house, most never seen before, until there were a hundred and seventy-three. A remarkable body of work, which became the Sketchbook this site is built on.
He kept painting to the very end — watercolours of the loch at Assynt, Holy Island, and a last pile of bird paintings in the conservatory. This site is our tribute to him: his life's work, gathered in one place, with more still to be added.
Jon, Andrew and Jane
for our dad, Chris Brock