When abstract expressionism arrived in Britain in the 1950s, Graham Boyd, who has died at the age of 96, was one of few artists who embraced the libertine scale and dynamism of American painting. Over a 70-year career, based latterly in Chipperfield, Hertfordshire, he made his own explorations of colour and light in non-figurative paintings and sculpture.
Born in Bristol to Herbert, a leather tradesman, and Hilda (nee Duckett), Graham’s path to abstraction was not straightforward. After two years of national service with the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment, in 1948 he revisited his postponed studies in illustration at Watford Art School, though his heart was drawn to oil painting. Then in 1953 a short-lived relationship led him to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), whose vast landscapes and vibrant ecology revealed to him a world in constant flux. It was an experience that irreversibly altered the trajectory of his painting, toward vivid colour and abstract form.
