Colin Self was born in 1941 and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1961 to 1963. He had his first solo exhibition in 1965 at the Piccadilly Gallery in London. He had an artistic vision which was original and very open to all influences. He has produced a vast and varied body of work over the past forty years. Clive Barker has described Colin Self as "an artist's artist" who has been hailed by, amongst others, Frank Auerbach, David Hockney, Peter Blake and Francis Bacon. Richard Hamilton wrote "He's the best draughtsman in England since William Blake".

As an artist, he has a fundamental link with the Norwich School. He was brought up to the east of Norwich, the eldest of nine children and trained at Norwich School of Art and then later at the Slade.

His art has rejected all contemporary conventions and he has very much chosen his own direction. During the Cuban Crises of 1963, he produced a series of Cold War studies which remain a unique and horrifying artistic statement about human beings on the edge of nuclear "oblivion". Some defining images are his Guard Dog on a Missile Base and Nuclear Victim, which is on permanent display at the Imperial War Museum.

When his friend David Hockney moved to Los Angeles Colin Self started studying ceramics in Germany and executed some sublime watercolours while he was "living wild" in Scotland. His new work since he moved back to Norfolk has become more intimate and poetic.

The Tate Gallery and the Norwich Castle Museum hold substantial collections of his work.

(From introduction to catalogue Colin Self - from Five Decades by Ian Collins).

Colin had a retrospective of his work at the Tate Gallery from 1995-6 of works from their permanent collection.