Pete Edwards has spent a lifetime in art at Pocklington School, but only now, at the age of 65, does he feel that he is coming into his own, writes JO HUGHES.

PETE EDWARDS says he is like Doctor Who. He has not retired, he has ‘regenerated’.

At the age of 65 and after a lifetime spent in art it is only now he feels he is setting himself up to be the artist he has always wanted to be.

For the past 40 years he has been teaching and inspiring others, including some great artists, until last year when he decided to give up his job as head of art at Pocklington School.

“I could have gone on until I’m 80 but the reason I haven’t is because I have to have a go at my own life,” he says.

For the past year he has been busier than ever, working towards a big new show dedicated to his work which has just opened at the Pocklington Arts Centre.

“The word retirement should be called regeneration, I feel like a bit like Doctor Who, I have regenerated and remain fresh, and my new start is like having the opportunity to be a student again.”

Like the Time Lord, he has a mission, the subject of his work is ‘the Art of Survival’, based on concerns for wildlife and the destruction of the environment, one he has pursued since his student days.

“Well before it became fashionable,” he says.

His first commissions as a young graduate fresh out of the Royal College of Art were sculptures for John Aspinall, a controversial zoo owner who set up breeding, rehabilitation and wild habitat programmes which have proved some of the most successful in the country.

His work has always had a message. He had several commissions for Aspinall’s Howletts Zoo, he worked for Ecologist magazine, and he hit the news when he interrupted a visit by a Japanese dignitary to hand him a gift, on which he he had asked him to stop whaling.

But when the first major oil crisis hit and Aspinall had to postpone his commissions, Pete decided he would do a bit of supply teaching to tide him through.

“I never ever thought I would be a teacher, I’ve never been trained as a teacher,” he says. “In those days, you didn’t have to have training. I got engrossed by enjoying teaching students, I found I loved it.”

He and his wife Elizabeth wanted to return to the Yorkshire countryside where they grew up, and from working in a ‘poor secondary school’ in London he came to Pocklington for a job interview in what was described in the advert as a ‘design centre’.

“I got off the bus, I wasn’t wearing a tie, I was very casually dressed, and I found myself at Pocklington School.

“When the secretary called through to say I was there she said, ‘Your candidate has arrived and he’s not wearing a tie, shall I send him away ?’ In those days the head of art loved eccentrics – not wearing a tie was considered eccentric... I got the job.”

He joined as a junior master in a department, which was one of the most progressive in the country, combining art, technical skills and design in one centre, and is still influential to the style of art he makes today.

He stayed there happily for 33 years, helping others to achieve their artistic ideas and influencing some major artists who went through the school including the great painter Xavier Pick.

“At first I thought I’m not going to give away my own ideas, but you do, I have given away a lot of ideas as a teacher.

“As an artist I feel that in some ways until now I’ve had my own life on hold, all of my own art has been on hold, I’m only at the beginning.

“Retirement has invigorated my vision, I can look at techniques and explore them in a more professional way and I get excited using materials I haven’t used before or in a totally different way to everyone else.”

His exhibition is of new work made since he retired. Paintings, prints and sculptures are thought-provoking, and show the benefit of his years of experience working in art. They celebrate the wonder of nature and beauty of animals in a seemingly simple, youthful and joyous way, they grab our attention, and impart a disquieting message.

He feels artists can have an educational role to play in conservation.

“Art has a role to play in the sense that you can be more temperate, you can put things out there without throwing bombs.”

Some of his sculptures are designed for a public place, for example a life-sized gorilla is designed to be made into a fibre-glass ‘Urban Gorilla’, which he hopes could be replicated and decorated by graffiti artists, and placed in cities, similar to the Cow Parade several years ago.

“They would be like the Trojan Horse taking the message into cities. I wanted to take the message out of the television and into the city,” he says.

Many of his prints and paintings feature the Dodo, alongside great works of art, for example da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, or Rodin’s The Thinker, he feels humans give masterpieces of art more reverence, credence and more protection. “Which is the lost masterpiece? Is it a work of art or is it The Dodo?” he asks.

• Pete Edwards’ Exhibition Walk on the Wildlife is at Pocklington Arts Centre until January 9