Yes, this painter’s had a colourful past!

Steve Brown meets the Bolsover man who has enjoyed teaching, writing plays, making music and now painting with an enthusiasm that’s boundless!

IT MIGHT SEEM  AWFULLY CLICHÉD to say that an artist has had a colourful past but this would certainly be true of John Connolly, a Bolsover-based landscape artist, who introduced me to his work at his airy yet cosy studio-gallery adjoining the hill-top home he, wife Sally and daughter Alice occupy on the edge of the town. It feels and looks like a real artist’s workplace: paintings abound on the walls and in boxes; paints and materials lie on the worktops; a stove burns brightly and Jessie the schnauzer snoozes contentedly in her basket in the warmth…