Darryl Nantais

Guest Artist, Opening Exhibition 2008

Darryl was born in Cambridgeshire in 1955. As a child he began painting landscapes and at the age of 12 he moved to Norfolk where he was able to capture the beauty of the coast and it’s “dramatic skies”.

After leaving home Darryl settled in Norwich where he studied the past Norfolk Masters such as Chrome, Cotman and Bright. Instead of The Ouse, he painted thousands of pictures of The Broads and The Yare.

At the age of 18 he began to visit Paris, and eventually lived there for about a year, where he met and worked with the then eighty-year-old Eduard Palmare, an old colleague of Miro and Picasso. Darryl was offered an opportunity to paint for a Parisian gallery but decided to return to England where he began teaching and working for an agency copying old master paintings.

On returning to Cambridgeshire in 1987, he founded The Peppin Brown Art Gallery in Whittlesford, which became renowned for its restoration and framing. More teaching followed and he was able to promote many East Anglian artists.