My friend Tony Knipe, who has died aged 80, was a painter, curator and teacher who made an important contribution to visual arts in the north-east of England.
Born in Swansea, he was the son of John Knipe, a sergeant major in the army, and Olwen (nee Goodwin), a shop manager. He attended Clevedon college in Swansea before joining the merchant navy – but left after becoming ill during the 1957-58 Asian flu pandemic, suffering bouts of pneumonia, and then having to have part of his left lung removed.
Tony painted from an early age, his interest in art stimulated by visits to the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea, and after his illness he decided to switch his attentions to the art world.
We became friends at Swansea School of Art, where he began a foundation course in 1963. After studying for a time in Paris, Tony was awarded a fellowship to Helsinki University for three years from 1967. In Finland he married Helena Jaatinen, a student nurse, in 1970. The lifestyle there, with its island retreats, made a profound impact on Tony, and the rich ground cover of lichens and moss became a subject for his paintings.
Returning to the UK in 1970 with Helena, Tony was appointed arts development officer for Leigh borough council in Greater Manchester, where he ran the Leigh arts festival, and in 1974 became associate director of leisure for the metropolitan borough of Wigan, where he was responsible for the Turnpike Gallery.
In 1978 he became director of Sunderland Arts Centre (now the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art) and during his 11-year tenure it became the northern region’s visual arts engine because of the scope, quality and reach of its exhibitions.
These included The Japanese Eye, in 1985, welcoming the Nissan car plant to Sunderland, and Who Chicago?, in 1980, which showed work of the Chicago Imagists for the first time in the UK. Tony was committed to making the arts accessible, and established an artist in residence post (held by Chris Stevens) for the 1983-84 season at Sunderland football club.
As a member of the Cullercoats artists’ studios, not far from his home in Newcastle, Tony discovered that the American painter Winslow Homer lived in Cullercoats village in 1881-82, painting the lives of the fishing folk. As a result, in 1988 he organised Winslow Homer: All the Cullercoats Pictures, the largest Homer show held outside the US up to that point.
In 1989 Tony went freelance and sought to focus on his art practice. He loved applying colour and paint marks of different values across a surface to construct abstract images. He had several solo exhibitions, showed in group exhibitions, and his paintings are in several public collections. He was one of the founders of the Newcastle Group of artists in 1984 and for a decade was their chair, helping to organise around 30 exhibitions across the world. For a time, before retiring in 2007, he also taught art to high security inmates at HM Prison Durham.
Tony’s marriage ended in 1991. He is survived by his daughters, Marika, Annette and Victoria, and five grandchildren, Cameron, Dylan, Nikos, Elena and Marianne.
