My father, Derek Culley, who has died aged 70, was an abstract artist who was mainly self taught and intuitive in his approach to painting.
His art used the language of abstract expressionism, with echoes of Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning and nods to his Celtic and Catholic Irish roots. His 2007 work Golgotha, for example, was inspired by the stations of the cross. His 2016 digital canvas Four Tribes is a homage to Ireland. For many years he subsidised his income by working in computing, but he decided to become a full-time painter after moving to Merseyside in 2004. In 2007, he received a $25,000 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, which enabled him to focus on creating art in his studio.
