Richard Kidd was born in Newcastle upon Tyne; he studied Fine Art at Newcastle University and in his final year (1974) was a prizewinner at the John Moore's Exhibition in Liverpool.  A year later he was awarded the Abbey Scholarship to the British School in Rome in 1975.   He was acclaimed for his highly original abstract works, sometimes using shaped canvasses, based on drawings he made on rock-climbing expeditions to remote locations.  Back in the studio these drawings were translated into large-scale paintings through which he sought to capture the immediacy of his experience of the landscape.

 

He lived for a while near Stratford upon Avon but returned to his home city in 1977 to teach painting at the University of Newcastle; in 1980 he was awarded a Harkness Fellowship and moved to America where he lived and worked for six years.  On his return in the mid-1990s his career took a new course; although he continued to produce his large abstract paintings in a new studio on Tyneside, he also became a successful writer and illustrator of children's books, several of which were shortlisted for national book awards.