My husband, Norman Toynton, who has died aged 86, was an artist best known for his work using Masonite pegboard. He wrote of “redeeming” this sensually dead, mass-produced material with lush paint and colour and patterning.
A student at the Royal College of Art in the 1960s, along with David Hockney and Allen Jones, Norman was expelled with Jones for rebelling against his conservative professors’ teachings and experimenting with new styles of painting. In 1962, he, Jones and Hockney were reunited in Image in Progress at the Grabowski Gallery, one of the first pop art exhibitions in the UK. Norman moved to North America in 1969, where he had a successful career as a painter and professor before returning to Britain later in life.
