-
My friend Dai Owen, an artist, illustrator and peace campaigner, who has died aged 82, settled in Chester in the 1970s, and his vivid line drawings became part of the city’s cultural life.
His work can be seen in the Grosvenor Museum, where his drawings adorn the information panels in the Roman Stones gallery. According to Jessie Petheram, the museum’s senior curator: “His lively, intimate, carefully observed drawings give a fresh view of Chester, bringing the historic city alive.”
Dai’s work also illustrates a series of information boards on the Sandstone Trail along the Cheshire Sandstone Ridge, a range of hills running across the county. In addition he designed a map of the landscape around Alderley Edge described in the novel The Weirdstone of Brisingamen with its author Alan Garner, for the museum’s exhibition A Tale of Alderley (2010) and The East of Cheshire (2010).
Starting in 1989, Dai illustrated a series of 20 Welsh language children’s books by Gwyn Morgan, as well as Inside a Victorian House for the National Trust (1993) and, from 2007, several volumes in the Digital Time Traveller series for English Heritage.
In the 2000s he became artist in residence at the Portico Library, Manchester, undertaking a project to record the stories of asylum seekers. He created animations to accompany the BBC Radio 4 series Quake in 2017.
In his 60s Dai returned to education, enrolling at Glyndwr University (now Wrexham University) for a master’s in children’s illustration and reportage, received in 2012. Embracing the freedom of reportage, he recorded the Chester Mystery Plays, street life and cultural events with gusto.
Dai was born in Pwllheli, Gwynedd, to Idloes Owen, a bank manager, and Lucy (nee Lloyd). In 1946 the family moved to Amlwch, Anglesey, where his sister Anne was born, and later to Bangor, where Dai went to Friars grammar school.
At Cardiff University he studied British archaeology. Then he moved to Chester for a graphics course at West Cheshire College, where he met Margaret Hetherington, a teacher of English as a foreign language. They married in 1981.
In Chester he joined the local Society of Friends and CND, and the Stop the War campaign, and volunteered with Samaritans. He also joined CND Cymru, designing posters and artwork for its magazine Heddwch. Dai will be remembered by many as a gentle seeker, exploring everything from shamanism to surrealism. He loved the local music scene, the Raven folk club, trance nights and reggae gigs.
Margaret and Dai holidayed in Ortigia, Sicily, and the Hebrides and Dai’s drawings captured both the bustle and the quiet. He was unfailingly generous with his art, and irredeemably modest about his talents.
He is survived by Margaret and Anne.
