Artist and tutor at the Glasgow School of Art

Born: 21 March, 1946;

Died: 10 September, 2018

PETER Bevan, who has died aged 72 after a short illness, was a dedicated tutor to generations of students at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA). A thoughtful and versatile artist, who worked in drawing, painting, sculpture and ceramics, he had an insatiable drive to express through art the essence of what makes us human. A life-long socialist and independent thinker, at the end of his funeral service in Glasgow last Saturday, his family and friends sang Burns' hymn to egalitarianism, A Man's a Man for a' That.

According to his friend, Barry Atherton, who started working as a tutor at GSA on the same day in 1973 and left on the same day in 2003, Peter Bevan was dedicated to art and art education.

He recalls: "Watching him teach or referee a group crit was a masterclass in good educational practice. It was incredibly exciting to witness. With Pete, art was always divergent in its trajectory and mind-expanding in its purpose.

"One of my many cherished memories of Pete’s brilliance echoes back to the Mackintosh lecture theatre and his presentation to a delegation from the Academy of Fine Art, Beijing. Drawing on his own fine art practice in China, Japan, USA, the British School in Athens, and his beloved India, Pete’s talk was dazzling in its eloquence and erudition. It was profound and insightful, in clear and concise language. It obviously translated well. The Chinese visitors responded with a standing ovation."

Peter Bevan was born in 1946 in Walsall in the West Midlands. The youngest child of Walter Norris Bevan and Annie Bevan, he was a bright inquisitive boy who did well at school. He became head boy before going on to be the first member of his working class family to go to university. While studying for a fine art degree at Cheltenham Art School, he met Catherine, a fellow student and they married not long after they graduated. The couple moved to London in 1968 where Peter – known as Pete – studied at the Royal College of Art until 1971.

Following the birth of their first child, Ursula, the couple moved to Scarborough, where Pete took his first teaching job at a high school for girls. The family moved to Glasgow two years later when he was offered a teaching post at GSA. There, he taught both academic and experimental drawing on the first year programme, latterly in fine art.

He made Scotland his home and embraced its culture. The Bevans lived initially in the west end of Glasgow before moving to Kilbarchan in Renfrewshire. Pete was an attentive dad to Ursula and younger son, Tom, who loved to make things for his children. Pete took students to Culzean Castle in Ayrshire during term time and he liked it so much he hired it during holidays for family and friends.

Catherine and Pete's marriage ended when the children were 12 and 7 and Pete moved back to Glasgow. The couple remained friends and his children recall enjoying a freedom many children would have envied today while growing up at his flat in Hillhead.

Always a keen traveller, he first visited India in 1989; a period he regarded as a pivotal experience in his life and work as an artist. Following this trip, he started to make sculpture in stone, wood and clay, occasionally casting into bronze.

When the opportunity to take early retirement came in 2003, he jumped at the chance to pursue his own art practice, moving to London briefly in 2004-2005 to study classical Asian art at the British Museum. He then took on a three-month collaborative residency and exhibition, Jugalbandi, with artist, Ganesh Gohain in Vadodara, India.

In 2008, he worked on a bronze sculpture residency at the Uttaryan Centre for Arts in Gujarat and returned to working in modelled clay-cast-into-bronze at the Bilal Academy of Art, Kolkata in February 2015. He wrote extensively about the work of Indian artists Ganesh and Sanatana Gohain in exhibition catalogue essays and in the Indian Contemporary Art Journal.

In "retirement", as well as travelling frequently to India, he had spells as artist-in-residence in Scotland, Japan, China, Greece and the US. Most of the residences culminated in work made on-site, which remain in public or private collections, others were site-specific and remain where they were made.

Ever the mentor, he encouraged and helped younger artists he met in India to find their way. Ganesh Gohain, in particular, came to look on him as a mentor and guru.

Speaking at his funeral, his son-in-law, Kenny Hunter, an acclaimed sculptor in his own right, said: "Pete’s passion for India and the study of art were key elements to his identity, but I believe it was the fever of making itself that sustained and compelled him in life. I know Ursula and Tom and all his close friends will testify to this – he lived for studio life. In fact for many years he lived in his studio, he lived for the dirt under his fingernails.

"He was consumed by the days that flew by like minutes as the sculpture he was working on demanded every thought and every sinew strained, when he was in the midst of those creative periods, when he was onto something, when we hadn’t heard from him for days, weeks – well, happiness doesn’t enter in to it. He was ready to suffer. To be totally engaged; at these times when hand, brain and heart are working as one – a sense of human wholeness becomes tangible. It is this brief and alluring altered state that artists chase all their lives – knowledge of it allows us to endure."

In recent years, Pete sold his flat in Glasgow and moved back to Kilbarchan. His new home there became a project as he set about landscaping the large garden and setting aside an area for a studio. He threw himself at these tasks with the energy and enthusiasm of a much younger man and once his studio was built, began making new works for an exhibition at House for An Art Lover in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow in 2016. He made a large number of works, alarming his family with the frenetic way he pushed himself, sometimes forgetting to eat.

After the exhibition was complete, his health began to decline and he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. In early 2018, he moved to a care home where he was looked after with compassion and gentle humour. His children were at his side when he died.

He is survived by daughter Ursula and her husband, Kenny Hunter, son Tom and his partner, Sarah Smith and grandchildren, Rosie, Joe, Charley and Ciara as well as two older siblings, Joan and Terry. His brother John predeceased him.

JAN PATIENCE