Arthur was born in Aberdeenshire, raised and educated in the West of Scotland and then went on to study design at Glasgow School of Art. After a five-year stint as a designer with the BBC, he worked as an Art and Design lecturer in further and higher education for the next twenty-five years.


On moving back to Argyll, Arthur now has time to devote himself to his first love – painting. He works mainly from sketches and photographs gathered on long hikes in the countryside. The sketches provide the quick, immediate, broad response to the subject and the photographs and supply more detail if required. He only rarely completes paintings “en plein air”, preferring to work in the studio from his gathered resources. This is because his painting technique involves a very abstract loose under-painting and often a lot of splattering and dripping, like action painting, before he even begins to draw out the image.

Arthur always works on three or four paintings at any one time and tries to bring them on together. If he gets to a sticking point in one painting, where he is not sure where to go next, he moves on to another and hopefully when he returns to the painting that has him stumped, he suddenly sees what to do. Somehow, magically in the break the problem resolves itself. The golden rule is never force it; it is always a disaster. In recent years Arthur has exhibited and sold work in the RSW and PAI annual exhibitions.