I studied painting and printmaking at Liverpool College of Art in the late 1960s, and was taught by some excellent artists and teachers including Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Don McKinlay. Later I went on to gain an MA (with Distinction) and PhD in the History of Art from the University of York. Some of my doctoral research led to the following publications:

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• ‘An Unusual Hell Mouth in an Old Testament Illustration: Understanding the Numbers Initial in the Twelfth-Century Laud Bible’ in Boulton and Bintley (eds) Insular Iconographies: Essays in Honour of Jane Hawkes, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2019.

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• ‘A Change of Clothes on the Morgan Leaf: the Apocrypha Master’s Illustration of the Transition of Saul’ in Boulton, Hawkes and Herman (eds) The Art, Literature and Material Culture of the Medieval World, Four Courts Press, Dublin 2015.

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• ‘Verdun, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 70, Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm’, Manuscrits numérisés de la Bibliothèque d’étude Verdun: Méditations et Oraisons de Saint Anselme. Complemenry notes, 2011.

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​Some of my research is available to read on https://independent.academia.edu/HarryStirrup​

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During the thirty five years I was an art and design lecturer I worked regularly alongside my students, most often from the nude in the life class, but also from the landscape. Working mostly in pencil, charcoal and acrylics, I made many drawings and paintings of the figure over the years. I still regularly attend a life class.

While on a short holiday in Cornwall in 2017 I did some drawings of the landscape in a sketchbook, and this kick-started a renewed enthusiasm for painting as a studio activity. In May 2018 I began oil painting regularly, mainly still life compositions, and the following year I was elected a member of Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. In 2019 I re-discovered American Abstract Expressionism through reading Ninth Street Women, written by Mary Gabriel. This helped clarify and confirm some long held ideas I’d had about painting. Currently, I try to work simply and minimally in the little gap between the figurative and the abstract, while avoiding preconceptions and preplanning. It is important for me to keep a balance between figurative observation and the abstract nature of paint, colour, surface and shape and, at least, to attempt to treat them with the same importance. The paint, colour and surface are not just mediums inhabited by images, they  are significant things in themselves, and in my paintings the spaces they create usually come before the objects that eventually occupy them.

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I have shown work in several group exhibitions including at the Turnpike Gallery, Stockport Art Gallery, Whitaker Art Gallery and Museum, and Gallery Oldham.

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New paintings and sections on drawings and watercolours will be added here periodically.

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All paintings are for sale.

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Please contact me by email on hrstirrup@yahoo.co.uk