David Tolley is an Oxfordshire man through and through. He was born in a bungalow, not more than a hundred yards from the bold contemporary house he has built for his family in a quarry in Bladon. A large part of the ground floor is a purpose-built studio. In it Tolley has worked diligently almost every day; but apart from a few friends, nobody has seen the huge body of work he has produced over the past 25 years. His interest in art began early.

“I went to the local grammar school in Chipping Norton. I was always good at drawing and at games. I almost went to Loughborough to concentrate on sport, but instead I went to the Oxford School of Art, where I did graphic design and a lot of life classes. As a project, I did a book of wood engravings of birds that used to nest in the quarry that’s now my home. I wrote it and did all the illustrations, and it got published.”

The book is a remarkable achievement for such a young man — the images have great finesse. David still has many of the engraved wood blocks, which clearly demonstrate the skill and the subtlety of his work.

“It was basically this set of engravings that got me accepted by the Royal College of Art. I did a lot of etchings and painting there, and I had a huge portfolio of work — but it was nicked! Before I got to the Royal College, I did national service. I was posted to Egypt, and that was really the start of my artistic career, because I went to the Cairo Museum as often as I could and studied there, and was very excited by what I saw.”

Also at the Royal College was Judy May, a young graphic designer whom David had got to know at Oxford Art School, and they got married. Soon two sons came along: Tom, who now lectures on art at Edinburgh University, and Nicholas, a portrait painter. “We had to make some money, so I set up a business painting pub signs. One of the first was for the Royal Oak at Ramsden, where I’m celebrating my 80th birthday, but as soon as it was up it was stolen!”

David also became involved in horse racing, first painting portraits of successful horses for trainers and owners, and then starting a small advertising agency specialising in the racing world.

“It was very successful, it absolutely exploded, in fact it was a bit too much. Judy was writing the copy, and it got larger and larger, and we were employing people in offices in Oxford and then in Hanborough. This was preventing me from doing serious work so, in the eighties, we moved to Montreal at the invitation of some cousins. My studio was a great place, and you could get metal work done, wood work done, and that’s where I started doing sculpture. My sculpture is very much influenced by what I saw in the Cairo museum, and also by medieval art. I was taken up by one of the best galleries around, and they sold extremely well both in Canada and in the United States. My paintings then were a lot about birth and children and characters. Nowadays, the subjects are still mainly figures. I like to paint in a sort of shorthand and only put the essentials in. I do more thinking than painting. It might take a month to do a painting, but the time I spend painting it is very short. I think about the next stage, go to sleep looking at it, and then get enthused, and, without thinking too hard any more, I just go at it, and it just evolves until I can’t do any more”. There is a sharp contrast between David’s meticulous, beautifully crafted engravings, and the psychologically complex, often angst-ridden paintings and sculptures. I especially like the sculptures. Slightly spooky white figures, made of resin and other media, line up against the wall or ride on strange metal contraptions with a mysterious air, remote in their own world of movement and thought. It’s no surprise they have been so sought after. But in the 25 years since his return to Bladon, David has never shown his work, even though he has been in his studio virtually every day. Now, as he turns 80, there is finally a chance to see a retrospective exhibition of the paintings, sculptures and engravings of a highly talented and individual Oxfordshire artist.