Painter and poet, Durrant was born Lavenham, Suffolk on 4th Oct 1925. He studied at Camberwell School of Art 1948-52 under Pasmore, Rogers and Coldstream, though it was another teacher, Keith Vaughan; who would prove the more lastingly influential. Durrant was a very reclusive person and the community of the art school was not for him, but he stayed on for the four years to graduate. He was already exhibiting with Helen Lessore's Beaux Arts Gallery while still a student. It was an interesting time in the history of English modernism and with painters such as Piper, Sutherland and Bacon newly dominant, Durrant emerged from Camberwell in the second wave of neo-Romantics, with Craxton, Minton and of course Vaughan as his contemporaries. In 2008 The Fine Art Society, London, held a major one-man show.
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