James Taylor explores the life and work of Eric Ravilious, one of the most distinctive and enduring British artists of the twentieth century.

Painter, printmaker, muralist, illustrator and designer, Ravilious transformed everyday English subjects into images of remarkable beauty, atmosphere and emotional resonance. From chalk figures on rolling hills and railway carriages to farm machinery, greenhouses, garden tools and shopfronts, he possessed an extraordinary ability to reveal the poetry and mystery hidden within ordinary life.

The talk also examines Ravilious’s work as an Official War Artist during the Second World War, when his calm yet haunting images of aircraft, ships, submarines and coastal defences captured both the machinery of war and the quiet tension of wartime Britain.