Jay Myrdal

On my release from the US Army in Germany in December of 1965, I moved to the UK, and after some effort managed to convince the Home Office to let me stay to begin my career as a creative professional photographer. I started with book covers and fashion, moved to the top shelf men’s magazines and then into creating record sleeves and publicity photographs for the music industry.
After a few years I moved into advertising photography and began to embrace special effects which, in the pre photoshop era, involved building complicated sets, background paintings, compressed air explosions, multiple exposures, invisible rigging and many other complicated techniques. When computer retouching systems finally arrived, I welcomed them and bought my own high end computer retouching platform while Photoshop was still in its infancy.

In 2003 I sold my West London studio and bought and converted an old schoolhouse in Stanford in the Vale, Oxfordshire where I continued to work for advertising clients for another ten years.
I have always enjoyed drawing and creating occasional watercolours, but it was when my new partner Jackie introduced me to acrylics three years ago that I finally had the ability to make changes and improvements, very difficult using ink and watercolours. This has allowed me much more scope in my creative paintings. Furthermore, it is no longer necessary to capture parts of an image with a camera; I can simply create images from my mind alone. I love it.