ABOUT THE ARTIST

My name is Martyn Hanks and when I first started travelling in the early 60s I just painted to pass away a spare hour. Although I have always enjoyed painting, as the years have gone by it has become my main reason for travelling, giving a real purpose to a trip.

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About 85% of my paintings were created on the spot, sometimes under quite difficult and
challenging conditions, such has been my desire to capture something of the country I am visiting.
The remaining 15% I have worked up later from quick sketches and photos made at the time.

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This website features a wide range of my paintings reproduced as fine art prints and cards
available for you to buy.

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More about Martyn...

"I am writing to let you know about an artist friend of mine called Martyn Hanks. Martyn, now in his 80s, who lives near Preston, has led a relatively quiet and unassuming life, yet at the same time an extraordinary one. It is a life I feel far more people should know about and I’m hoping that once you have read through this text you will begin to understand why. 

Beginning in the late 50's and just about every year for the next 60 years, Martyn has travelled in over 160 countries (please remember there are only 195 in the world) and on every continent, with the exception of Antarctica.

That in itself would be an extraordinary achievement by any standards but Martyn has combined this prodigious amount of travel with his other lifelong passion, painting watercolours –generally painting them ‘on the spot’ at each carefully selected location - at least several of them in every country he visited - and often many more. In India, that vast sub-continent which he has visited on five separate occasions, he has painted dozens.

 

 His unique and accomplished body of work - over two thousand paintings - charmingly and colourfully capture some of these country’s most iconic views, its buildings, people and activities in both urban and rural settings. They capture, as paintings often do, a moment in a time when the pace of life and the speed of getting around a country were so very different from what they are today.

 

To give you an example of one of his more epic odysseys, Martin travelled overland to Australia in the late 1960’s painting in several countries which would be considered too dangerous or totally off-limits to a traveller today. He was one of the early trailblazers on what later became known as the 'hippy trail'. Martyn however is at great pains to point out that he was never a hippy himself – he didn’t require artificial substances to make him appreciate and capture the beauty of the world around him.  

 Always travelling independently and using public transport as much as possible and long before smart-phones and the instant access to website information –and tourist opinions - on transport, accommodation or places to eat from the likes of ‘Trip Advisor’ or the Lonely Planet or Rough Guides, it is almost impossible to imagine anyone travelling in such a way today.

Martyn travelled in countries such as China in the 1970’s when the country was just beginning to open its borders to tourism and Bhutan, the model for Shangri-la, where access to this very private Himalayan country has always been tightly controlled and regulated.

 

As a freelance architectural model maker working for a Preston-based company Martyn was able to combine his love of travel and painting with an interesting and rewarding career which generously allowed him the freedom to travel when and where he wanted. His practised eye for architectural detail is evident in the meticulous way he painted the buildings and monuments in so many of the countries he visited.

 

Although he flirted briefly - and rather disastrously with car ownership in the mid-60’s - for most of his long life and travels Martyn has either walked, cycled or taken public transport. Amazingly, considering some of the relatively dangerous situations and places he sometimes found himself in, with little or no ill effect.

 Martyn also found time to publish three well-respected walking books about the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and The Peak District -all are still available on Amazon.

 

Martin, unstoppable in his desire to travel to experience and to paint in the ever-dwindling number of countries he’s got left to visit, set up his easel as recently as 2018 in Swaziland and only last year was travelling and painting the quieter back-roads of Northern Portugal and the Ivory Coast.

 

With his 80th birthday approaching I am certain that the inspiring and entertaining story of his travels combined with such a prolific output of enchanting watercolours to illustrate them would provide your magazine’ readers with a fascinating insight into a highly creative and fulfilled life. His is a life which combined a passion for a modest, unhurried type of exploration often among barely-known countries with a rare talent to capture on paper and canvas, some of the unique qualities of those many cultures he travelled to and experienced.

 

A few years ago Martyn met with the Peterborough-based graphic designer, Chris Lane who built this website which contains the majority of his watercolours.

 

 Like myself , Chris  also was keen to let the world know about  this gentle and charming man, possibly one of the last of his generation  to travel the world in this way and to capture in watercolours so many of the world’s most enchanting places."

                                                                                                                                            David Munro -  July 2020