Alan Singleton is a man of few words but great talent. Very shy, he works in the records department of a large public hospital, working on his art in the evenings or during holidays. He studied with Sarah Longlands, the first "Avenues of Sight" artist, both at Manchester and The Slade School, and they are still good friends despite living in different towns, many miles apart. Born and brought up on a farm in Lancashire, in the windy and wet north-west, he remained in London for a few years after finishing his studies, then moved back up north.

He used to work on large canvases, sometimes doing several completely different pictures on the one canvas, and painting them over before he was happy. I once saw a canvas that had even been turned back to front and restretched on its frame! Now, though, his preferred technique is acrylic on relatively small sheets of paper: no bigger than about A3: Much more manageable when you have been working hard all day at something completely uncreative.

I won't take it upon myself to comment on the individual pieces here displayed: it was difficult enough to persuade him, on a visit up north, to let me photograph some pieces to put on the site, let alone to get him to say any thing about them. I can’t even say in which order they were painted, because every thing is heaped up in a corner of his small studio, and nothing is ever dated. They are though, well worth looking at, Alan having an intense, expressionist and somewhat melancholy style entirely his own. I am now looking forward to seeing his new work.
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