Jeremy Karpel

After successfully passing my A Levels, I left school in 1980 and completed an art foundation course at Watford Art School. My intention was always to work within the feature film industry, specifically in art direction and set design, and to this end, I gained my BA in Interior Design and Architecture.

This qualification gained me an entrée into Warner Brothers as a draughtsman and trainee set designer working at Pinewood Studios on films such as Little Shop of Horrors and A View to a Kill.

But as Sterling strengthened in the mid 1980s, US based film companies found it too expensive to make films in the UK and work became very scarce, particularly for new boys like me, so I had to go and find a ‘proper job’ and ended up leaving the industry and found a job as a property negotiator in Hampstead.

I’ve always drawn. My earliest memories are of me drawing everything and anything, and using any material to create it with – and on! 

I do not profess in any way to be a serious artist, just someone who likes to express himself artistically through a pencil, a biro and an occasional black felt-pen. However, as I’ve got older, I have built up the courage to work with other mediums and my recent exhibition, Life’s Not Black and White,  at Burgh House, showed my move towards acrylic and oil painting and the vibrant use of colour on a larger canvas.