Jeff first visited Crete in 1964. Coming from the softer light and temperate atmosphere of England, the strong Cretan sunlight was a revelation. Visually the sun was in charge – essential, life-giving, law-giving, indifferent. Regular working periods there until 1996 underlined the dialogue between lights and darks – their patterns and forms, unceasing movements, implications, surprises, disguises, and heightened contrasts in both colour and tone.

This experience shaped his outlook back in Oxford, painting, drawing and etching in his studio, in the garden and around local street scenes, and underlining John Berger’s view that a dominant mode of painting is an attempt to make the transient permanent.

Jeff trained at Brighton College of Art (1952-56) and won the British Institution Fund and Prix de Rome scholarships. He has taught at the Royal Academy Schools, Reading, Oxford and North Staffordshire Universities, and at several art schools including the Berkshire College of Art. He is a Senior Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers.

Between 1964 and 1996 he worked regularly in Crete as draughtsman for the British School of Archaeology. He was based at Knossos, dividing his time between technical drawings of Minoan pottery, and painting and etching in the surrounding landscape.

His work is in collections of the British Museum, Ashmolean Museum, the universities of Oxford, Reading & Cambridge, and in many private collections here and abroad.

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