Peter Darach deliberately didn't include a biography in the catalog for his 1983 one man show Me and My Family - his friend Timothy Hyman tried to persuade him to - but he felt that the work should stand on its own.
Short biography:
Peter Darach was born in 1940 in Derbyshire. He was a figurative painter who studied at the Royal College of Art in the early sixties. He taught in various art schools but in 1969 "gave up a well-paid job" in order to paint full time. He met Anne on the Isle of Skye in 1973, they had two children. When Anne died in 1983 Peter and the boys moved back to London, where he remained for the next 40 years painting, drawing and bringing up the boys as a single parent. He married twice more, and wrote 7 anti-novels. He died in 2023.
Detailed biography:
Peter Darach (né Millband) was born in 1940 in Derbyshire. He grew up in the village of Spondon, where he roamed around with his dog Raq: “catapult, dog, knife, matches, what more could a boy want?” he said of his childhood.
Later in life he wrote: “I think the reason I paint pictures is because of a dream I had when a child. Each night for quite a long time (many weeks) - I was inexorably drawn towards the entrance to the underworld - my experiences there shaped my life. I was powerless to resist the fascination for the entrance & moved slowly to it while still awake. Its entrance was under a ruined stable on a piece of wasteland called DeVases.” (The remains of Field House and its grounds were known locally as Devases (after the Devas family) at that time children “armed to the teeth” were free to roam the dereliction.)
Peter went to grammar school in Belper. After he left, he worked in the rail testing lab at Derby Carriage and Wagon works for 3 years. Outside the door of the lab, men hauled crucibles of molten steel, sometimes he helped pull.
He studied at Derby & District College of Art 1959-62 then got into the Royal College of Art (RCA) 1962-65. The RCA paid for him to travel to Vienna so he could study the Breugels for transcriptions he was making. A friend of his parents sent him a £10 note, it was the first one he’d ever seen.
His tutor at the RCA, Carel Weight, asked him to write something about his family - personal background - as part of the process to being elected to the Royal Academy, but he saw this as a loss of freedom - a trap - so he didn't do it.
He showed in John Moores 1963 and 1995; Bradford & London Group 64; Arts Council Touring Exhibition 1964 & 65; Young Contemporaries 1964 & 65; Stroud Festival 1964; ICA 4 Young Artists 1965; Narrative Paintings Arnolfini 1979; Me and My Family Artspace Aberdeen 1983 (Toured to Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow and Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne); Jerwood Drawing Prize 1997; Inside Out Castlefield Gallery 2016; Megan Piper gallery 2017.
He taught at Oxford School of Architecture and Manchester School of Art. But in September 1969 "gave up a well-paid job" to become a full time painter. He lived and worked in an empty corner-shop in Battersea, at risk of slum clearance, supported financially by his first wife Maureen, who taught at a nearby school. He said, at the time, that the insecurity put him "on edge and it brings extra into the work when you are doing nothing but painting".
In 1969 while camping on the Isle of Skye they bought a croft in Sconser, overlooking Loch Sligahan, which he renovated and extended. Maureen sent him £20 notes by post to "keep him out of the way". They separated in 1971.
In 1973 he met Anne Marie Dinwiddie, who was working at Sconser Lodge during her university summer break. Anne moved into the studio in Battersea.
In 1975 when Anne was pregnant with their first child, Timothy, she changed her surname to Darach. She took the name from a stream on the Isle of Skye called Allt Darach. Peter started using the name Darach in 1977.
In 1979 he showed five of his large paintings and half-a-dozen drawings in Timothy Hyman's Narrative Paintings exhibition.
Peter and Anne lived in Balham and then West Norwood - where their second son Jack was born in 1980 - until 1981 when Anne, Peter and their two children moved to Bonnyton Farm, near Dunfermline.
Two years later Anne died of cancer, aged 29. That year Peter Darach had a one man show entitled Me and My Family in Aberdeen, then he and the boys moved back to London, where he remained for the next 40 years painting, drawing and bringing up the boys as a single parent. He married twice more, and wrote 7 anti-novels. He died in June 2023.