"My husband, Norman Toynton, who has died aged 86, was an artist best known for his work using Masonite pegboard. He wrote of redeeming this sensually dead, mass-produced material with lush paint and colour and patterning. A student at the Royal College of Art in the 1960s, along with David Hockney and Allen Jones, Norman was expelled with Jones for rebelling against his conservative professors' teachings and experimenting with new styles of painting."
"In 1962, he, Jones and Hockney were reunited in Image in Progress at the Grabowski Gallery, one of the first pop art exhibitions in the UK. Norman moved to North America in 1969, where he had a successful career as a painter and professor before returning to Britain later in life. Born in Hornsey, north London, Norman was six years old when a German rocket destroyed the flat where he lived with his mother, Maud (nee Wilson);"
"they were saved only by a wardrobe that fell across the bed where they slept. Meanwhile his father, Harry, a draughtsman of naval charts, was on an Arctic convoy bound for Minsk. Owing to their home being destroyed, the family had to move from lodging to lodging after the second world war, and Norman frequently changed schools. Aged 15, he went to Hornsey College of Art; in his final year he had a painting accepted for the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition."
Norman Toynton was an artist best known for using Masonite pegboard, redeeming a mass-produced material with lush paint, colour and patterning. He studied at the Royal College of Art in the 1960s and was expelled with Allen Jones for rebelling against conservative professors and experimenting with new painting styles. He exhibited in Image in Progress at the Grabowski Gallery in 1962 and moved to North America in 1969, establishing a successful career as a painter and professor. He taught at the University of Victoria and Massachusetts College of Art, won prizes in Europe, and returned to Britain later in life. He survived wartime bombing as a child and trained at Hornsey College of Art.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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