Chris Poole  ... went to an art-free Primary school. At Grammar School the Art teacher provided HB pencils, coarse bristle brushes and muddied broken sludge-brown tempera blocks. As ungainly adolescent boys we spent several years either drawing other boys sitting on stools or painting tea-cups, chianti bottles and geraniums. Chris learnt nothing and was wisely not allowed to take 'O' level Art. [He would NOT have passed!]. 
Instead, in the run-up to exams, Chris was allowed to sit in the school Art Library.  And OH WOW!! Here 'Art' lurked in hidden books on unseen shelves behind a hitherto locked door. Art unexpectedly embraced him and  he fell instantly in love with it. The whole shebang. He rapidly devoured book after book,  but especially loves that wild 'Shock of the New' period of rule-breaking from 1870 to 1950. 
Technically incompetent, untutored, lacking any artistic flair whatsoever, Chris still felt driven over the next decade to sketch and paint, often in Surrealist or Expressionist Mode.
After work as a research scientist he taught maths and science but promised himself that on retirement he would pick up his palette again.
Chris's work is no longer quite so weird. He feels happy with any picture where the process turns into a 'conversation' and where the final picture contains elements he would never have imagined at the outset. The quest for that elusive surprise is his reason for producing new pictures.  
He finds OVAS invaluable both socially and in terms of picking up ideas and techniques. His interest constantly veers between not quite realism and not quite abstraction.
Favourite painters:  Chagall,   Matisse, Klee, Picasso, Ernst, Magritte, Van Gogh, Monet,  Bosch, Vermeer, Murillo, Botticelli, Dalí ...
Favourite living artists: Andy Goldsworthy [genius], Hockney, Anselm Kiefer, Daniel Cole.