Alan Preece was a fine artist and painter, and I have wanted to feature his work on here for a while now. I have amassed various images of his work, either from auctions of items or from greetings and post cards bearing his work, many of which I own.
Alan was born in Redditch, Worcestershire - coincidentally where I live - in 1931, his parents Sidney Roland and Miriam (nee Atkinson) having also married in the town in 1923. He had an older brother, Gerald Ewart, and his father Sidney was also an artist. I have constructed a quite basic family tree, going back a few generations, which can be viewed here (a new window will open). My main aim with this page is to showcase the artists work, so the tree is not as detailed as it could be, but gives enough information to identify a number of people who may also be part of another tree.
As will be seen, he painted a wide variety of subjects, but lots of his work, which was used on a set of greetings cards, featured drawings of places all over the Midlands. I have quite a number of these, but there are more to locate. A number of his pictures of aircraft and racing cars appeared on postcards, which are also featured here.
He became involved with a friends racing team, and almost accidentally realised he had a knack for painting racing cars. Quite quickly his pictures became quite sought after by enthusiasts, and were subsequently owned by drivers, promoters and team owners. In time this led to commissions, not only for cars, and a Spitfire painting found it's home at the Headquarters of an RAF Association. He was lucky enough to meet the great Juan Manuel Fangio at the Birmingham Festival of Motoring in 1980, realising a long-held ambition. The Grand Prix Ball before this festival allowed Alan to exhibit his work, at the time he described it as the highlight of his life.
I have separated the images into a variety of different subjects, and into different areas for those featuring places.
| Click
on the links below to view the contents of each
section |
||
| o Birmingham |
o Warwickshire |
o Racing
Cars |
| o Shropshire and
Cheshire |
o Worcestershire |
o Motor Bikes |
| o Staffordshire |
o Aircraft |
o Other Paintings and
drawings |
