Coming Home

WAYNE ATTWOOD spent seven years living on a yacht painting in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, yet it took a return to Birmingham to truly find his artistic calling he tells STEVE PILL

- Steve Pill

Wayne Attwood was a man with a plan. His two life-long passions were painting and boats, so he thought he would combine them both and set sail across the world, making art as he went. He and his wife, the textile artist Angela Attwood, spent 18 months renovating a classic yacht before launching from Plymouth. What could possibly go wrong?

The couple sailed down the coast of Spain and Portugal before heading up the Mediterranean, stopping at Malta, Sicily and other islands along the way. They eventually made their way across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and it was here that Wayne first got the first inkling that this lifestyle was not for him. “It was all pretty beaches and the Another Day in Paradise scenario, and it just didn’t inspire me,” he says.

While this could easily sound like the ungrateful complaining of a spoilt artist, nothing could be further from the truth. Attwood is a fiercely talented painter who has grafted incredibly hard to get himself into that position in the first place. Born in 1970, he grew up on a Birmingham council estate yet was fortunate to find encouragement for his passions.

Despite living in the country’s most land-locked city, he began sailing at a young age thanks to a local charity that took council estate kids off the street and taught them how to sail. At another after-school club, a metalwork teacher also introduced a pre-teen Attwood to oil painting and the art of the Pre-Raphaelites. His father further encouraged his son, having been a skilled draughtsman himself. “I think deep down he wanted to pursue artistic career but he had a really rough upbringing.”