Artist John Piper was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire in 1946 and moved to Cornwall while still at school. He soon discovered the contemporary paintings being shown in St Ives and first exhibited his own work in the late 1960s. He taught painting, drawing, and ceramics in schools in Penzance for twenty years before leaving in order to paint full time.

I paint in oils and on board or canvas. All of my paintings are based on West Penwith. Granite cottages and barns with blackthorn trees are the main themes. The paintings range from very small, ten centimeters square to one hundred and fifty centimeters square. Many of the paintings have previous ones beneath giving a highly textured surface. These are then scratched into allowing the underpainting to show through. A past chairman of both the Penwith and Newlyn Societies