Terry Brownbill is an artist who works in oils, acrylic, photography and mixed media. This exhibition is a showcase of his astonishingly versatile talent. He has been painting full time for five years, graduating from the prestigious Norfolk Painting School in 2019, under the tutelage of one of Britain’s most accomplished artists, Martin Kinnear.
Brownbill was born and raised in East Africa and before Covid he worked as a consultant safari guide to wealthy American clients. In 2017 his knowledge and local connections meant he and his clients were given a very rare privilege of being invited to the gathering of the clans for a Samburu tribal wedding in Northern Kenya. A selection of mixed media images on show in this exhibition are the product of that wedding.
His Don Quixote paintings represent his alter ego, not unnaturally after tilting at windmills as an investigative journalist for many years.
Brownbill had always wanted to be an artist and, at the age of 19 went to art college but lack of income meant he had to leave after one year. He ‘fell into’ journalism by accident but then spent 25 years as an international journalist and editor (taking four years out to gain a BA(Hons) in fine art photography and film, and was awarded a one-year lecturing fellowship at Stourbridge College of Art off the back of his degree show).
He returned to investigative journalism after the fellowship in 1987 because he missed the adrenaline buzz, having previously been the editor of the Cyprus Mail and one of the founding journalists that started the Sultanate of Oman’s first daily newspaper, The Oman Daily Observer in Muscat. He went on to work on the Sunday Times and The Sun for six years before starting Business Week newspaper in Cambridge.
He sold his 39 percent share in Business Week to go into PR, founding a successful PR company in Cambridge and London in 1998. However, the constant desire to be an artist became overwhelming and in 2019 he took the plunge and has never looked back. “Much better for the soul,” he said.
Since making the decision to become an artist, Brownbill has had a large oil painting selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, received an international Nikon Award, and was one of 200 artists worldwide selected to exhibit with the prestigious Visual Arts Association in 2020. His work also attracted considerable interest, and sales, at a joint exhibition at Gallery Holt in north Norfolk in 2022.
Brownbill is currently battling with a rare and aggressive form of Acute Myloid Leukemia for which he recently received a stem cell transplant from his son, Michael. He is over the moon to have had the opportunity to showcase the scope of his work in this solo exhibition.
For more information about Terry and to view his work, please visit his website here.