Drumroll For Painter Chris

A former rock musician who toured with Bon Jovi and Black Sabbath is marching to a new beat as one of Lancashire’s up-and-coming young artists

- Roger Borrell

Chris Rivers once plied his art by beating the living daylights out of a drum kit. He travelled the world as part of a successful – and, no doubt, very noisy – band of musicians who supported tours by the likes of Bon Jovi, Status Quo and Black Sabbath.

Today, the soundtrack to his life is a much quieter one after swapping the crash, bang, wallop of the rock music industry for the more delicate rhythms of oil painting. He still listens to music when he paints but that is now just an echo of what he calls ‘a crazy period of my life’.

His pictures are striking in terms of size and content – they have been known to stop people in their tracks at art fairs – and his work can command prices of anything between £4,000 and £16,000. They adorn large walls in the US, Australia and Scandinavia as well as the UK.

At first glance, some of these big canvases might seem the place where abstract art meets Impressionism – swirls of pink rose petals caught in a whirlwind. But look closer and you may spot a tiny host of fluttering cherubs or an astronaut floating helplessly in space. Some can be a shade darker with tiny winged skeletons – unsettling but never quite macabre.