His colourful, usually action-orientated marine art reflects his long and successful career sailing yachts. Through Adrian Bishop’s vibrant canvasses you can almost feel the wind blowing, the lapping of the waves and the salty perfume of sea spray on the skin. With his intense juxtapositions of colours, unexpected perspectives and dancing compositions,  Adrian’s art celebrates the world of sailing and the fresh geometry of the sport.  Its protagonists become a festival of lines and shapes in motion, converging, diverging, overlapping and intertwining.    It is an exercise in imagination but grounded in the natural world. The passion and honesty of his painting is sherbet for the eyes and rewards active looking

As a professional delivery skipper with four transatlantic crossings under sail, racing success as skipper in the two handed Shetland Round Britain and Ireland race and numerous wins in the highly competitive  IOR, CHS and IRC classes,  Adrian has developed an impressive sailing record. He has also developed a unique set of skills sailing historic square rigged sailing ships. He has sailed Dhow’s across the Indian Ocean and completed a six month voyage from Japan to England on the replica of Sir Francis Drake’s galleon the Golden Hinde.  He was navigator on the reconstruction voyage of the Godspeed galleon,  the first colonist ship to America which founded the Jamestown colony.

His impressive career never veered from his early passions – yacht racing and art.   He studied at the Plymouth College of Art for five years for a BA (Hons) in painting drawing and printmaking before managing to get his work banned from college and expelled in the final year due to “artistic differences”.

He was Artist in Residence for the Plymouth Classic yacht Regatta and had a solo show at the 102 Gallery in Plymouth and has exhibited three times with the Rhizome Group shows at the Cube 3 Gallery in Plymouth.

Adrian is a long-time member of the Royal Western Yacht Club and keeps his yacht in the Barbican in Plymouth.