In the mid sixties Graham Sendall studied graphic
design at West Sussex College of Art.
After leaving a career in advertising began
painting stylised-realist scenes of his village and the surrounding
area, a land of allotments, chapels, follies, country signs
and red telephone boxes. Being almost always unpeopled it gives
them a ‘something is about to happen' quality. They're
peaceful, almost too peaceful. There is an idealism about his
work, though none of it is premeditated.
He has been shortlisted three times for the
Kaupthing/Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times watercolour
competition held annually at the Mall Galleries. In 2006 he
was a prizewinner with “The Big Tree'.
Frank Whitford of The Sunday Times
wrote
“ what struck the judges about this prizewinning picture
was the nostalgia it sharply evokes. It looks like a view of
part of an English village, so perfect it couldn't exist.
...the painting certainly makes the ordinary seem extraordinary”
