Noel Dyrenforth

Noel Dyrenforth is perhaps the most distinguished and well-known batik artist in the UK. He is the President and original founder of the Batik Guild. Meeting him in London the night before my plane departs for The Gambia was the capstone of my UK experience. 

Here is a fellow batik traveler whose work has taken him to the U.S., Australia, Japan, Germany and China. Japanese rozome especially, has been the major inspiration in his work and it is obvious in the detail and skill in each finished piece. After working in batik for over 30 years, Noel's work has been displayed in exhibitions all over the world and is included in national and private collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the National Gallery in Melbourne. 

In spite of his personal success, he laments the demise of batik as fine art in the UK and blames it on the lack of tutelage available for new students and few exhibition opportunities for existing artists. More than anything, it is the rigid systems and regulations of modern day society that has squashed all arts and creativity. His work of organic shapes inside or against rigid grids speak of this matrix world in which we live and the need to break free from it.