My friend Simon Richardson, who has died aged 58 after suffering from a heart attack, was an artist, craftsman and boatbuilder. At the time of his death he was restoring his boat Glala, one of the Dunkirk little ships.
Simon was born in Hammersmith, west London, to Joy (nee Savage) and Martin Richardson, an architect. Following their parents’ divorce, Simon and his younger sister, Sarah, attended the progressive Frensham Heights school in Farnham, Surrey.
In 1986, Simon enrolled on an art foundation course at Chelsea School of Art, in London. We were in the same tutor group and I remember his prodigious skill as a draughtsman and his formidable intelligence. The following year he was accepted on to the BA painting course at Chelsea, working under the tutorship of the artist Roger Ackling.
After Chelsea, we ended up co-running the Clove gallery in 1991, in an empty retail space in Butler’s Wharf, on the south bank of the River Thames, just east of Tower Bridge. Clove ran for nearly two years, exhibiting the work of many recent graduates, including Gillian Wearing and Gavin Turk.
The success of this project was in no small part possible because of Simon’s phenomenal organisational skills and vision about what a gallery could become. Yet, while Simon was passionate about art, the art world left him cold.
Simon had an interest in many diverse things, whether it was medieval art, typography, beer-making, computers or bicycles. In 1996 he began working for Premium Press Monitoring, a press cuttings company in Bankside, central London. He enjoyed the work, and the people he worked with. After the company folded, he continued to work nights for another press cuttings firm, in Borough, reaching the position of shift leader.
In 2007, Simon decided to buy and restore a wooden boat moored in Ipswich, Suffolk. The motor yacht Glala is a historic vessel built before the first world war, and one of the flotilla of little ships that sailed from Ramsgate to Dunkirk in 1940. When Simon bought it, it was not in good condition. He spent nearly 10 years working on the boat, meticulously researching and studying every aspect of maritime design and boatbuilding. In 2015 he qualified as a maritime electrician and did some work on other boats in and around Suffolk.
The level of love and care he put into the boat was extraordinary. Glala was a herculean task and, despite his best efforts, it drained him physically and financially. Before he died, Simon had decided to sell the boat.
He is survived by his partner, Liz Evans, whom he met in 2015, by Joy, Sarah and his step-brother, Dominic, and by his nephew, Ben.