Mervyn Charlton was born in Essex in 1945. Always artistically driven, it took Charlton some time to identify how to channel his energy. After abandoning school at 15 to pursue a career as a professional cyclist, the romanticism of the demanding athlete lifestyle began to fade after four years and the artist-to-be found work as a layout artist in a silk-screening company. After another four-year cycle, Charlton eventually left everything behind to take up academic artistic training at the age of 27. After a two-year foundational course at Loughton Art College under the tutelage of John Danvers, he graduated from Nottingham Trent Polytechnic with a BA in Fine Art in 1980. The language he developed during that time is very personal. Drawing from myths, medieval tapestries, board games and popular folklore, his paintings are a complex flattened universe of endless imagination.
