Rigby Graham was born in Stretford, Manchester, in 1931. He moved with his family first to London and then to Leicester in early childhood where he attended Leicester College of Art from 1947 until 1954, specialising in mural painting. After teaching at a number of local schools Rigby Graham returned to lecture at the College of Art, firstly in Graphic Design and Printing, then in Education and latterly in Bookbinding. He retired from teaching in 1983.
Rigby Graham is principally a landscape and topographic artist. He has written of his subjects: I came to find in ordinariness extraordinary qualities. I found ordinary buildings, vistas, streets, canals, railways, warehouses and allotments of enormous interest. The more I wandered about and spoke to people, the more I drew, painted and wondered, and the more interested I became. It was not the aesthetic, nor the historical, geographical, social or economic patterns, it was not religious, the commercial, the industrial or the residential which interested me, but perhaps something of all of these, for I became increasingly aware of the passage of time and the way in which its passing had left its mark on everything ( Rigby Graham, Wymondham, Leicestershire: Wymondham Art Gallery, 1979).
He works across a great range of media; painting, drawing and through many methods of printing to create single pieces, limited edition prints, book illustrations, illustrated booklets and broadsheets, postcards, patterned paper and murals.
From the guide to the Rigby Graham Archive, 1958-2002, (Manchester Metropolitan University, Sir Kenneth Green Library)
