Profile written by Tom Jenkins from Aberaeron
"As a young man George had a successful career in commercial art, most notably designing publicity material for Shell Oil and Ealing Films, creating the poster for Ealing's 1941 production of Will Hay's 'The Ghost of St. Michael's'. He then teamed up with the poet, John Betjamen. Together they attempted to carve out a career in advertising but neither of their hearts was in it.
George soon turned his back on London and his friends at Soho's French pub, amongst them the young Dylan Thomas.
He moved to Great Bardfield, Essex to concentrate on his search for an artistic voice, alongside artists such as Edward Bawden, Michael Rothenstein, Paul Nash and John Piper. They later became known as the Great Bardfield School.
In 1953 George made an accidental detour through the coal-mining valleys of South Wales and discovered the Rhondda where, he said, 'I realised that here I could find the material that would perhaps make me a painter at last.'
Later that year he settled in Aberaeron, Ceredigion, from where he made regular forays into the Valleys. His Bedford van, which often became his home as well as his studio during these trips, was a familiar sight among the slag heaps and terraces.
George produced a large number of drawings, etchings and paintings, in particular of the villages that comprise the Rhondda Fawr and Rhondda Fach Valleys. There followed a period of considerable success with highly praised one-man exhibitions of paintings and prints in London and Cambridge, extensive press coverage in The Studio, Apollo, Art News and Review, The Times and The Guardian, and television programmes for Anglia, BBC Wales and Huw Weldon's 'Monitor', which was screened twice on the BBC in 1961 and later in the year at the Venice International Film Biennale.
Until his death in 1993 he continued to enrich the cultural life of Aberaeron, and to paint the Valleys reflecting the changes that occurred there since that first dark, wet day forty years earlier which 'transformed his purpose'."
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R Howes, Devon
George and Katy Chapman and their children brought a wonderful cosmopolitan air to Aberaeron in the Sixties. Pier Cottage rang with laughter and with the Holgates, they encouraged the arts to develop. It was just what the town needed and I firmly believe it started it off on the road to its delightful state today. They certainly encouraged many of us to go on to art and drama schools. George always had a wee speck of colour somewhere in his paintings...wish I owned one!
Alex Williams Cheltenham
I first heard of George Chapman when I watch the BBC Monitor film made about him in the late 50's. He was painting the mining valleys of South Wales from a camper van. He was a hero to me and I moved to Wales after art school to paint Blaenavon and remote hill farms. I was lucky to meet George and my wife bought a painting, he gave me his smoking jacket which I still wear. I arranged to see him so that we could draw each other a week or two later he died, I loved talking with him about painting, he is still a hero to me.
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Profile of the artist who lived in Aberaeron between 1953 and his death in 1993.
