About Jeff Perks
Artist and Sculptor

Jeff Perks is an artist who lives in Cressbrook, Derbyshire, with a cortijo and Sculpture Workshop in Lanjaron, Las Alpujarras, Province of Granada, Spain.

He specialises in paintings, prints - primarily linocuts and cardboard cuts - and sculptures - using wood, metal and stone.

Over the last two years he has produced a large number of paintings of Spanish landscapes.

Jeff Perks has a colourful history. He left school at 15 with only two O-Levels ? Art and Woodwork. He has picked grapes in France, mixed concrete in Zurich and hitchhiked to India. As deckhand he sailed back to England. He joined the 23rd Special Air Service Regiment as a territorial soldier and then became a member of the British Communist Party. Later he was an Art Director at BBD&O the American advertising agency.

He was a mature student at the National Film and Television school leaving to become a freelance Producer/Director at both the BBC where he made arts programmes for Arena and Omnibus and the new Channel Four, including films about artists, cartoonists, punk bands and women comediennes. When TV lost interest in intelligent arts programmes Perks found himself without a job once more. He turned back to his first love, painting and sculpture. His work has been exhibited at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Liverpool Blue Coat Gallery and Bristol Arnolfini Gallery. "You could say my life has come full circle and that at last I've put my two O-Levels to good use."

"Wherever possible the materials I use are either reclaimed industrial wood and steel or from trees up-rooted by storms - this helps to maintain the existing native woodlands and landscape. The shape of the reclaimed material both inspires me and defines the resulting sculpture"