Rigby Graham was born in Stretford, Manchester, in 1931. He moved withhis family first to London and then to Leicester in early childhood wherehe attended Leicester College of Art from 1947 until 1954, specialising inmural painting. After teaching at a number of local schools Rigby Graham returnedto lecture at the College of Art, firstly in Graphic Design and Printing,then in Education and latterly in Bookbinding. He retired from teaching in1983.
Rigby Graham is principally a landscape and topographic artist. He haswritten of his subjects:
I came to find in ordinariness extraordinary qualities. I found ordinary buildings, vistas, streets, canals, railways, warehouses and allotments of enormous interest. The more I wandered about and spoke to people, the more I drew, painted and wondered, and the more interested I became. It was not the aesthetic, nor the historical, geographical, social or economic patterns, it was not religious, the commercial, the industrial or the residential which interested me, but perhaps something of all of these, for I became increasingly aware of the passage of time and the way in which its passing had left its mark on everything
(
Rigby Graham, Wymondham, Leicestershire:Wymondham Art Gallery, 1979).
He works across a great range of media; painting, drawing and through manymethods of printing to create single pieces, limited edition prints, bookillustrations, illustrated booklets and broadsheets, postcards, patternedpaper and murals.