For Royston Hopson painting was his life, an integral part of his being. He ate, he drank, he painted, he slept, he woke and he painted. In January, with his usual determination, he completed what was destined to be his last painting, painted on the very day the ambulance arrived to take him to hospital where he died a day later. He was working enthusiastically for an exhibition to be held at Oriel Glan y Mor in Fishguard. The work was completed and although - regrettably - Royston was not there in person the exhibition went ahead, and in this 'Celebration' the gallery was filled with the spirit of this dynamic, loveable and sometimes infuriating man.

He was an artist who worked with amazing rapidity, avoiding the trap of working and reworking a piece until the impetus was lost. Although Pembrokeshire had been his inspiration from the time he was  stationed with the Royal Navy in Kete in the 1940s his work sprang from a vast array of sources.

He led a varied and colourful life - one that was rarely easy - and much of that life is reflected in his work. He was born in Hertfordshire in 1927 of parents who were both in service and who named their son after the town in which they first met. With his family he was bombed out four times during the war and it was in a spirit of retribution that he joined the Navy at the age of 16, shortly afterwards finding himself bound for Japan. This was an ill-fated journey. In a horrific accident on board the commander and some of the crew were killed, and worse was to follow for an impressionable young man. His ship was the first RN vessel to enter Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb and the horrors he witnessed there lived with him in demons that pursued him for many years, eventually to be exorcised by painting.

During the three years that followed, Royston remained in Japan, meeting its people, learning its customs and absorbing its culture. Shintoism made a lasting impression which he incorporated into his own philosophy, combining its disciplines with his own Christian beliefs.
His return to the UK and posting to Kete brought with it two love affairs - his deep affection for the county and its landscape and his life-long devotion to Daisy his wife.
He loved to tell the story of meeting the girl who was Fishguard's carnival queen at a dance at St Mary's Hall as he made his first visit to the town to support the ship's football team.
"A couple came into view", he recalled, "the lady's back towards me. She was wearing an ensemble of a white satin-like blouse with wide sleeves, a black velvet 'frontier' jacket and a knee length bright red skirt. Lovely long legs and absolutely glorious dark brown shoulder length hair."
It was a scene he painted many times during their marriage and then, obsessively, in his total devastation at her death in 1996 - sometimes happily, sometimes in a nightmarish scene.
Unable to tear himself away from his new-found love he missed the liberty boat back to Kete and had  to present himself at the police station where, before giving him a bed in the cells, they called his commanding officer to report that he was both sober and safe. The following morning, fortified by a slap up breakfast cooked by the segeant's wife, he caught the bus to Haverfordwest before setting out on the 12 mile walk back to his station.

The couple were married in 1949 and Daisy, and their first child Terence, accompanied him on his various postings. Royston had been painting regularly since his days in Japan where his shipmates nicknamed him 'Michael' - after Michaelangelo! - but it wasn't until he was stationed in Plymouth that he made his first professional sale, to a gallery in the Barbican there. A stint in Malta followed and it was there that he made important contacts with a number of eminent Maltese painters including Hugo Carbonaro, Frank Portelli and Francesco Baldachino. Most importantly he was 'discovered'by Giorgio Preca, Professor of the British Academy of Rome after exhibiting a semi-cubist painting 'Che Gelida Manina' (based on Puccini's Boheme) and also one of his most disturbing paintings, 'Hiroshima', at the Malta Trade Fair. With the co-operation of his commander who allowed him a flexible duty  roster he then studied under the Professor at the Academy in exchange for teaching the first year students, and also joined the Malta Modern Art Group, later Atelier 56, continuing to send work there after his return to the UK.

On returning to civilian life in 1962 he and Daisy made their home in Fishguard and Royston did many jobs of work, including sign writing (like many other well known Pembrokeshire painters seeking to finance their lives as artists). Like other artists, too, he painted 'pot boilers' when the need arose and at one time set out - successfully - to paint 100 saleable views of Fishguard.

However, his true artistic output lay in the work echoing his life experiences, his interpretations of everyday life, the excitement of discovering what is hidden, and in theatricality - seeing all reality as being theatrical. In 1965 he opened the town's first commercial art gallery, Gallery Un, exhibiting with his own work paintings by other high calibre artists - John Cleal, John Knapp-Fisher, Frederick Konekamp and Vik Hayton (who went on to do a six year art project for the Kennedy's in the USA).

But, all the time, he was dogged by ill-health and mental breakdowns. He said in later years, "I was getting to know the reality behind the Rolling Stones hit 'Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown'. This illness caused havoc for my poor wife as regular work became almost an impossibility for me to carry out."

At one stage it was only Daisy's intervention that stopped him from destroying all his work, and for a time he did no painting - a black period in his life - but, he said, rebirth came from the support of Barry Paishe and John Cleale who, in 1981, offered him an exhibition at the Workshop Wales Gallery. His doctors had recommended that he should paint, not only as therapy but also to regain his sense of identity and being. Some of the work recalled the horrors seen in Japan and his lifelong nightmarish reaction. Much was exciting, whether disturbing or not; some was bland, maybe as a result of medication; some shone with brilliance. He constantly exhibited in the UK including, amongst other venues, the Royal West of England Academy and Leeds University and in 1991 Philip Alder, the Arts Officer for Dyfed Cultural sevices arranged a successful Welsh tour of his paintings with support from the Welsh Arts Council Touring Fund.

In later years Royston's life was deeply clouded by Daisy's ill health as she first contracted cancer and later broke her back in an accident, while twice, she nearly died in his arms as she suffered athsma attacks. "But still she smiled - a smile for everyone," he said, "But one morning in 1996 that smile went out, The eye of my day had closed."
With the trauma of Daisy's death, in an attempt to escape from an identity he was unable to cope with, he decided to rename himself Aidys Roysan - a being who was not such a hard person as the old Royston Hopson. Until recently much of his work, especially from that dark 1996 period, was signed A Roysan, but happily in the last few years of his life he managed to acheive a state of mental stabillity for most of the time and so found that he did not need Aidys anymore.

With the encouragement of friends he was persuaded once more and delighted in highly successful shows in Glan y Mor Gallery Trefin and again at Oriel Glan y Mor when they relocated to Fishguard.
Later in December 1998 the Welsh Arts Council enabled him to visit Malta. Here he experienced poignant reminders of the past which he contrasted with present decay but commented, "Negatives can and must be changed into positives, and so can be changed if one has the will. If I have any mission with my paintings, then that is my rationale".

copyright Sybil Edwards June 2003