Born 8 June 1940 in London, Richard Jefferies was always drawing and making
plasticine models, he liked nothing better. However, given up for adoption
at birth, what was natural for him was not so for his unnatural parents
('Art school is for long-haired homos!' said his adoptive father). So,
sacked from school for lack of attendance and general lack of interest at
15, he became a petrol pump attendant at a Cockfosters Garage. After a
couple of other menial garage jobs he joined the Household Cavalry, the
Horse Guards, learned the equitation arts, and for three years sat and stood
for London as a tourist attraction, trooped the colour, spat and polished,
and mucked in as well as out! Upon leaving the army he gained a job selling
race-tuned Austin-Healeys and Minis along with Len Adams and Graham Hill. It
was soon after this that young Tim, his first son, was conceived before
Hilary Tompkins and he had married. Marrying an heiress (Knights of the
Green Shield stamp and shout! sang Genesis) did not diminish his drawing and
pre-Spitting Image plasticine modelling, and a crust had to be earned.
In 1968 his marriage over, Jefferies moved to live and work in New York and
in an apartment up near Gracie Square, the metamorphosis began to take
shape. Upon a trip back to Europe he met a Berlinerin and followed her to
Berlin. Club DJ by night and a discoverer of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New
Objectivity) painting movement and the work of the Entartete Kunstler
(Degenerate Artists) by day, he much admired the German Expressionists
(Meidner, Dix, Grosz, Schlichter, Schad, Griebel) who were all revelations
to him, and so in Berlin he began to paint. He moved on to a radio show as
well as other DJ work, and slowly began on the path he still takes to this
day.
In 1977 Jefferies married the daughter of the Catalan artist Jose Bascones.
Helena had grown in the chaotic home of a painter and encouraged the
autodidact Jefferies to pursue his lifelong ambition to be a professional
painter. She goaded him on: 'You can draw better than my father. He can only
paint.' In 1979 in La Mola Club, Puerto Andraitx, Mallorca, he mounted an
exhibition of 25 caricatures. The vernissage was a total success -- all 25
sold that evening. When Andraitx's famous Tim's Bar was sold recently, some
of the paintings that have hung there since that night were a condition of
the sale.
In 1985 Jefferies rented a small country house in the Spanish coastal
village of Burriana (75 kms from Valencia), loaded up his car with canvases,
paper, brushes and paints and took the plunge to become a full time artist
and painter.
Since that time and hundreds of paintings and pictures later, Jefferies has
shown in Valencia, Berlin and Barcelona, and appeared on TV and radio
extensively in Germany. His paintings hang in homes in Hollywood, San
Francisco, New York, London, Berlin, Madrid, Dublin and Barcelona, and
counts among his clients and admirers: Rolling Stone Ron Wood, Maria
Niarchos, Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, Roberto Shorto, John Bentley,
Valerie Dumont, Clio Shand, Alex P, Avis Davis, Manuel Werner, Axel Fü
hrmann, Jose Luis Garcia Alonso, Cosmo and Brigitte Campbell, Elfriede
Felmy, Rolf Eden, Ringo Starr, Bruce Kirkland and Toni Young, Lord and Lady
Gormanston, Guy and Andrea Dellal, and Alfonso Vilallonga.
Jefferies lives in Devon with his three dogs. He has five children.
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