Glasgow-born Hull artist Tony Denison’s first love was sport – he stayed on in the RAF  after National Service partly to indulge his interest. But it was while he was still in the Forces that he was diagnosed with life-threatening tuberculosis – a period that led to his discovery of painting and a new career as a teacher. Now, well into retirement, he is as creative as ever. Andy Mortimer went to meet him . . .

Hull artist Tony Denison with two of his latest watercolours

It’s the final over of the fourth test between South Africa and England in Cape Town. England have their worst batsman on strike and he has to survive six balls to save the match for the tourists.

I’ve been listening to the Five Live commentary in my car and, having foolishly booked an appointment coinciding with the final hour of play, it was with some reluctance that I leave the relative warmth of my leather seats for the pre-arranged interview.

I’m in The Avenues in Hull to meet Glasgow-born artist Tony Denison. He’s part-way through a series of oil paintings of Swanland and, after hearing his strong Scottish drawl on the phone the previous day, I’m fairly sure he couldn’t care less about how Strauss, Pieterson and Onions are doing in the southern hemisphere.

How wrong I was . . .

“Do you like the cricket?” he asks as I enter his front room-cum-studio. It was wife, Barbara, who answered the door to me; Tony was too engrossed in the radio to hear the bell.

“It’s the last few balls and I would like to see what happens, if you don’t mind,” he tells me.

We sit quietly as the balls tick down. Three, two, one . . . I won’t bore non-cricket fans with the details, but the end result was England held out for a rather momentous result and my opinion of Scottish people changed forever.

“I know I’m not supposed to like the England cricket team but I love all sport and I like to follow them,” says Tony (73),  a former RAF photographer and teacher.

“I played a bit in the RAF and this game is particularly interesting to me because my brother lives in Cape Town – just around the corner from the ground. The ironic thing is he’s not a huge sports fan like me and he’s not really into the cricket. He’s also not into the football and the World Cup is in South Africa this year. You have no idea how much I would love to swap homes with him this summer.”

A winter’s scene in Westella

Born in Glasgow, Tony is, nevertheless, one of the most travelled people I’ve ever met. Much of this is down to his time in the Armed Forces and he admits art came to him fairly late and almost completely by chance.

Today he specialises in representational art and focuses mainly on painting buildings and, occasionally, golf courses.

“My mum was a housewife and my dad a shipbuilder and, although we were quite poor, everybody in our street was as poor as us, so it was never an issue,” he said.

“I joined the Armed Forces aged 17 – ahead of my planned National Service – and became an RAF photographer. I was just getting into the hobby at the time and it was an easy decision to make.”

The RAF role covered a range of disciplines including identifying reconnaissance pictures, taking aircraft maintenance and incident photos and photographing visiting dignitaries, including the Royal family. But it wasn’t just the work that kept him in the Forces beyond his initial two years service.

“I have always been really sporty and I had the chance to indulge this. I  played cricket, badminton, squash, table tennis and football. I was a decent inside forward – I like to think the late George Best saw me and learnt from what I did – but a serious illness changed all that and, in a way, introduced me to art.”

Diagnosed with tuberculosis, he spent the next 10 months confined to a hospital bed. “I didn’t feel ill and I was as fit as anyone, so it was really lucky I was in the Forces because it was caught really early and I had the very best care. If it hadn’t been diagnosed, I could have been dead in three years.

“At the time, a drug had just been invented by the Americans, which was helping to save a lot of lives and I was started on that. But with so much time in bed I needed something to do.”

And that something would be art.

One of a series of paintings of Swanland by Tony Denison that will be on display

Tony began painting to relieve the boredom. “I taught myself how to draw and paint in a very amateur, self-interested way because I had to find things to do that weren’t physically active. I also got very good at snooker but that’s a different story.

“The interest started there and once I got out of hospital – after eventually having to have a lung removed – it never stopped.”

Tony continued in the Forces until the early 1960s and then he settled in Hull after his final posting to RAF Leconfield. After a short stint at teacher training college, he collected a diploma in education of the handicapped and went on to become head of art at Brunswick Avenue Junior High School, in Hull.

He taught children in the bottom sets and says his “sympathy of the underdog” made him want to help those who many other teachers wouldn’t.

Away from work, his love of art and painting was on the increase and after a visit to Ferens Art Gallery, in Hull city centre, found an inspirational figure that would shape the rest of his artistic career. Tony said: “When I first came to Hull I would go to Ferens a lot and I was struck by the pen and ink and watercolour work of Allanson Hick, an architect from Hornsea who worked in the city.

“I remember wanting to speak to him so I wrote to his office via the gallery and got the chance to meet him. He was one of those people who would tell you what he thought very directly and I appreciated that.

“Thankfully, his wife was Scottish so he was keen on Scots like me and he taught me about artistic drawing. It was another good bit of fortune and it was from him that I learnt a lot of my artistic techniques. I’m not the best artist or even particularly talented, but it’s the challenge I have always enjoyed.”

Tony quit teaching in 1987 and, since then, has concentrated 100 per cent on his art. In the past decade or so, he has taken people all over Europe on art holidays, often booking travel, transfers, hotels and teaching artistic techniques in full.

He stopped doing this at the turn of the millennium to concentrate on his own art and, since then, has worked hard on painting some of his favourite locations and landmarks, working in oils, acrylics and watercolour.

“The art I like to do is, I guess, quite old-fashioned,” he says as he shows me a few copies of paintings in Venice, Egypt and Hull. “It’s representational art and, although I never aimed to be an architectual artist, it’s what I do a lot of. It appeals to an older age range of art lovers and people like to buy paintings I’ve done in Egypt or Venice, particularly if they have visited that place in the past. They bring back good memories.

“I’ve held a couple of exhibitions at the University of Hull, in Cottingham Road, with the help of director of fine art John Bernasconi, and he’s been a big influence on my career.

“Art is now my main occupation. I get up in a morning, go swimming, have breakfast and then, by 9am, I’m working in the studio.

“If it’s a nice day and the light is right, I may go out and sketch as well.”

Tony is currently working on a series of oil paintings of Swanland and hopes to exhibit his art in the village hall there over the next couple of months. The work includes paintings of the village hall, pond and Christ Church.

For more information on the forthcoming exhibition or Tony’s other work, call: (01482) 443310.