Artists
Fred Yates
Fred Yates, renowned for his primitive style and inspired use of colour, was born in Urmston, a suburb of Manchester.
On leaving school he worked as an insurance clerk and served as a Grenadier Guardsman in World War Two. On returning to Manchester in 1945 he worked as a painter and decorator and began to paint pictures of the rich industrial architecture of Manchester, the red brick terraces and the commotion and humour of street life- themes he returned to throughout his career. Eventually he enrolled on a teacher training course at Bournemouth College of Art and in 1950 won a traveling scholarship to Rome and Florence.
In 1970 he gave up teaching and moved to Cornwall to paint full-time. He subsequently lived in Somerset and Brighton, often returning for inspiration to scenes remembered from his childhood in Manchester, before moving to France in 1999. Living initially in Rancon, some forty miles north of Limoges he moved to several other French locations before eventually settling in a mountain village in Drome, some one and a half hours drive from the Medeterrain.
Yates has always railed at the idea of artistic sophistication. Beauty he once declared resided in ‘simplicity and a child’s mind’. His apparent primate style,is one filled nonetheless with subtlety and an inspired sense of colour. He is often compared to Lowry, one of his great heroes but the likeness is a very tenuous one. He and Lowry are opposites in terms of technique, texture and palette.
Their paths did cross, however, on at least one occasion. In 1954 Yates won second prize in a competition organized by the Football Association. Lowry won the competition with his painting ‘Going to the Match’.
From early exhibitions in galleries throughout Cornwall and the West Country, he has successfully exhibited throughout Britain and abroad.
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