No 975 Monday 12th - Sunday 18th June 2023
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eil Davies is a regular at the Tipsy Toad family pub in El Galan. He is also a very talented artist, one that is very confident of his own artistic ability, and although favouring watercolours, he particularly likes to experiment, be it with mediums, with textures and with art forms, where the outcome, he says, is knowledge, and where failure is just as valuable as success.
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His ambition was always to be an artist but with a successful career in construction, leaving secure employment was always going to be a concern, however, on reaching his 45th birthday in 1993 the leap of faith was finally made and, together with his wife Sue, the pair left their comfortable lifestyle in Morecambe and headed for the small fishing and holiday village of Burgau on the Algarve, where he then spent month after month building up his portfolio, prior to opening a studio in the town centre.
NEIL’S THE NAME - CHARITY’S THE GAME
Fast forward to the present and almost 30 years later, after dozens of prestigious commissions across the world, the couple settled in El Galan and, almost immediately their relationship with their local pub began. “I soon became a regular at the Tipsy Toad where I got to know the proprietors Andy and Lisa, and after one particular discussion during the early winter of 2021 we were throwing ideas around as to how we could cover a blank wall in the bar. The seed for the Sporting Mural was sewn,” Neil said, “a feature of sporting crests and badges in the form of a large mural.” Of course, Neil was to be the artist. He would create the mural while the local clientele and holidaymakers would be encouraged to sponsor their favourite sports club crest.
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