. Jonathan 'Bill' Bayley has been creating pictures for for 45 years. He is self-taught mainly, and has earned his living as a scientist in industry, but mostly as a science teacher in state secondary schools. He is 73, has been married for 50 years and has three offspring and four granddaughters. He has put on his own exhibitions every two or three years in his own house in Alcester. The house he has lived in for 38 years used to be a local shop, and it makes the perfect place to put on exhibitions. 

He started by using oils, and now uses mainly watercolour, acrylic and computer graphics. He has done line drawings in pen, and has over 60 sketchbooks done whilst on holiday, around where he lives in Alcester, in fact anywhere he finds himself. He has sold many paintings and drawings over the years, but has never made a living at it.

He is not sure if he woud call himself a professional artist, but he has no intention of stopping doing pictures.
His subjects are mainly landscapes, often local, but some exhibitions have centred on places he went for a holiday, eg Morocco, Cairo and Australia. He tries to convey a feeling for a place rather than the precise depiction of what is there, but has never yet managed to paint abstracts, although he has tried. He has done portraits, mostly in pencil, but sometimes in acrylic and watercolour. Subjects are often children, but he has done quite a lot of life classes, and learned how difficult the human figure can be. He has done two years at Leamington Art College in evening class learning etching, and a short course on screen printing in Birmingham. He has done lino cuts, usually on specially made sheets of silicone rubber, as he was a polymer technologist with Lucas Aerospace, where he made the sheets in his lunch hour. 
He is not enamoured of the professional art world, and has never tried to sell his work in any gallery except his own, preferring the independence that doing it himself brings. He gets on with other artists, and has learned a tremendous amount from them over the years. His main influences have been Samuel Palmer, Matisse, van Gogh and Munch. He loves the work of David Hockney, who has bee an inspiration at times. 
His next 'exhibition' is called 'Make me an Offer', as he wants to clear out all the old paintings he has around, at a suitable price, and possibly to be free to start out in a new direction. Whatever direction this may be, it will be centred on the place he has lived in and loved for 43 years, South Warwickshire