Obituary: William Crozier, artist

William John Crozier, artist.

Born: May, 130, in Yoker, Glasgow.

Died: 12, July, 2011, in Hampshire, aged 81.

WILLIAM John Crozier, to be known to all as Bill, was born in Yoker, Glasgow in May 1930. His father worked in the shipyards and the family moved to Troon when Bill was five and his father became a foreman at the Ailsa shipyard.

School was at Barassie Junior, where he made a lifelong friend in William Irvine. At Marr Academy, both boys were encouraged by the art master and at 16 - via a visit to Paris with Irvine and inspirational exhibitions of Van Gogh and the masters of the School of Paris at Kelvingrove Art gallery - his destiny was set and he enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art in 1949.

Here he took something from David Donaldson, William and Mary Armour but as much from meeting Colquhoun and MacBryde in London and William Gear in Edinburgh. He took a sabbatical year as union president, when he remembers going back-stage to see Frank Sinatra at the Apollo in at attempt to book him for a performance at the union.

His diploma was awarded in 1954 and he moved to Paris and then London, where he renewed his acquaintance with "The Roberts" and many other painters, including Minton and Bacon and the poets George Barker and Allen Ginsberg. The next year he was in Dublin, after his marriage to Elspeth McKail and his son Paul was born there.

Back in England the following year, he established a studio in Folkstone and began to work in earnest; a show followed at the Parton Gallery in Greek Street and from there the Drian Gallery took him up and through his friendship with Adrian Heath he showed large canvasses at the Artists International Association.

Crozier's subject in the late 1950s is inspired by landscape, particularly of north Essex, where he had moved to Pebmarsh (although like many of his bohemian country neighbours, Soho was a powerful magnet).

In 1962 he signed a contract with Arthur Tooth & Sons and travelled to Ayrshire and, importantly, to southern Spain for inspiration. Crozier was highly articulate and had a lively mind; he was able to communicate to others both the seriousness of painting but also a sense of the absurd adapted from an early and enduring understanding of Sartre.

He first taught part-time in Ealing, Central and Maidstone and in 1968 he was appointed head of painting at Winchester School of Art (although he still found time to be present at les evenments in Paris in the summer). He continued to contribute to a great variety of collaborations. He took up residencies in the Balkans and had exhibitions in Glasgow at the Compass and at the Edinburgh Festival with Richard Demarco, producing a considerable graphic oeuvre.From the early 1970s, the human figure - increasingly reduced to skeletal forms - began to inhabit his landscapes, but by the middle of the decade his mature vision was firmly established: strong, confident, gestural paintings are characterised by broad marks and a brilliant, personal palette, which is instantly recognisable to his devotees.

Crozier had Irish roots and had always visited both North and South and he took the unusual step of adopting Irish citizenship in 1973; a decade later he bought his cottage at Kilcoe in West Cork. This was a continuing source of subjects: the headlands, field-edges and coppices but also a spiritual home for a roving, poetic spirit that had restlessness inbuilt.

Bill was remarried in 1981 to Katherine Crouan and they made a home in Winchester and then Wareham. He was given an Emeritus Professorship for European Studies at Winchester, but ceased all teaching in 1987 as his exhibiting career took off in Dublin, London and in Edinburgh, with the Scottish Gallery, where he showed at the Festival in 1989.

Commissions, honours and triumphs came to him in the last 15 years of his life (along with a few disasters: his Hampshire studio and the work for a Paris show was destroyed in a fire in 2001) and he was happy to renew acquaintances and find new friendships, one of which led to a late love-affair with the landscape of Haute-Provence.

At 80, he was comfortable in his own skin and happy that his talents were recognised. He worked through a period of illness with great courage, but undoubtedly had a lot more to give.

He is survived by Katherine and his children Paul and Siobhan.