Contemporary Fine Art @ The Piper Art Bar

Focusing on the last days of steam in the 1950s, Wrenford works from Ordnance Survey maps and from his collection of more than 200 railway books to create painstakingly accurate paintings whose subjects range from freight locomotives, to luxury passenger trains. He developed a passion for steam trains growing up at Cromer, where both grandfathers were engine drivers. However, although a talented artists from an early age, he went on to study maths and physics at university, later gaining a PhD and chartered physicist status. After carving a career as university lecturer, he worked as an inventor in the electronics industry, going on to teach physics at an independent school. In his spare time he worked on his own inventions, including a new type of wind turbine. Since realising his childhood dream of becoming an artist after opting for semi-retirement a few years ago, Wrenford has gained a reputation as one of the area's top railway artists, attracting commissions from UK and American clients. "I enjoy painting, but I also love capturing a sense of history and it is nice to know that people looking at my work feel that it evokes a bygone age too," he said. Wrenford now divides his time between painting at his Sheringham studio and working as a consultant in physics to an industrial concern, and in medical equipment design. His paintings, which can take months to complete, have been exhibited at galleries in Norfolk, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, Somerset and Scotland, with Wrenford also publishing Lines into London, a book charting the history of London railways in the post-war years.