Ian Potts

Ian Potts (1936–2014) was a painter and educator, who was head of the painting department at the Brighton College of Art and exhibited largely as a watercolour landscape artist.

Potts’ work has been added to several public and private collections; including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Arts Council collection; Towner Gallery, Eastbourne; Hove Museum, East Sussex Council; as well as the University of Brighton's Aldrich Collection.

Ian Potts was born into a mining family in Birtley, County Durham, the only child of Noble and Annie Potts. His artistic talent was first spotted at Chester-le-Street Modern School. At 17 he went to Sunderland College of Art, where he studied fine art and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools in London. His graduation in 1958 was distinguished by the award of the Silver Medal for Painting, which led in turn to his appointment to Brighton College of Art.

In 1959 Potts married a fellow student of the Sunderland College of Art, Helen Bewick. He began his professional career with a travel scholarship which enabled attendance at the [British School at Athens]. This began Potts' professional interest as a travel painter and painter of European and Mediterranean landscapes.

Ian Potts joined the Brighton College of Art as a painting teacher in 1963. During his long career he became Head of Painting during his career at the college, as well as Deputy Head of Fine Art. He retired in 1995, having enhanced the regional, national and international reputation of the institution, helping to guide its role in the new Brighton Polytechnic and later the University of Brighton.

Josie Reed recalls in her obituary for the Guardian in 2014 that Potts "was a popular tutor, known to his students – who included the Turner Prize winner Rachel Whiteread – as Uncle Ian. A skilled poker player, Potts held his own in games against the head of department, Gwyther Irwin, who reputedly had once earned his living playing poker."

Potts was a life-long traveller, bringing this experience to his experiments with landscape composition and the watercolour medium. Of Potts' initial use of watercolour Michael Tucker notes: "it was at first its mundane convenience that drew him to it, as the most practical means of taking note of what was immediately in front of him and visually so intrigued him. He would for ever be a great and curious traveller, and from the time, shortly after his graduation from the Royal Academy Schools, when a travel scholarship took him for a while to the British School at Athens, he would have sketch-book and box of watercolours always in his bag."

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