About Christopher Crofton-Atkins

Christopher Crofton-Atkins first learned to sketch from his father in Lima, Peru. Living on the Pacific coast, his earliest work recorded the local imagery with charcoal and watercolor.

A love of the outdoor life marked him from childhood when he would hunt duck and dove with his father on the coastal savannahs, and fish for jack and corvina off the beaches near Lima. His earliest sights and sounds were viewed through the prism of a Latin world. It was a young, unspoiled world, full of empty shorelines teeming with bird and sea life.

Formal schooling took Christopher to England, from where he traveled extensively throughout Europe. There he developed an interest in oil painting and was tutored privately at a studio in London.

He pursued his interest in oil painting at university in Canada under the direction of John Goodwin Lyman. Lyman, formerly the art critic for the Montrealer, had founded the Contemporary Arts Society of Montreal.

Lyman was a mentor for Christopher's love of painting the tropics. He encouraged Christopher to continue painting what Lyman liked to call "God's own sea and sky," a world which he had found in the Caribbean islands. Christopher continues to paint in Lyman's tradition on location, and in his studio on Martha's Vineyard.

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