Artwork and books by Jim Curran
Jim's new book:- here, there and everywhere.
The master storyteller, Jim Curran, has finally produced the biggest story he can tell. For readers of his previous books it is full of surprises, conundrums and split lives. Teaching in Bristol during the week, he lived a different life in Sheffield at weekends. A teacher of art, he developed a career as a mountaineering filmmaker before realising that he'd always wanted to be a painter. And this great humourist turns out to be an intermittent sufferer from depression. The warmest of people, as his characterisation of his friends here demonstrates, he reveals a strand of loneliness throughout his life. By turns this book is hilarious and heart-breaking, anecdotal and reflective, sociable and self-doubting. Its drive for honesty is as unwavering as its eye for a self-deflating story. As a rigorous self-portrait its impact lingers beyond the words, the pencil and the paint.
Jim Curran has climbed worldwide for exactly half a century with many of the leading lights of mountaineering - Chris Bonington, Joe Brown, Doug Scott, Alan Rouse. He is an artist, mountaineer, author and filmmaker. He has visited the Himalaya 15 times and written seven books. Both books and films have won many awards at festivals worldwide and in 1997 he was awarded an Emmy for outstanding camerawork. Jim has had exhibitions of his paintings at The Alpine Club in London and at The Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal and has been shortlisted five times for the prestigious Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature. He won The Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award in 2002 and Best Book on Non-Fiction at the Banff Mountain Book Festival in Canada in 1995. In this autobiography Jim Curran tells the story of two great loves of his life, mountains and art. In here, there and everywhere... he travels to many of the world's great ranges describing a life climbing, filming and writing about them. This is in contrast with a long commitment to art education in Rotherham and Bristol. Jim Curran can wring humour out of even the most harrowing situations and yet is not afraid to express his grief at the loss of so many of his close friends. In particular, he revisits the K2 tragedy in 1986, when 13 climbers perished on the mountain, giving rise to controversies which have never been resolved. He writes frankly of his personal life revealing that he suffers from depression and even here the humour is not far away.
The book is a celebration of a life lived to the full. Jim Curran lives in Sheffield on the edge of his beloved Peak District.
  
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These paintings are for sale. Please contact me for further information. Prints also available at affordable prices. |
About Jim Curran
If you’ve enjoyed your climbing on Southern Sandstone you may well be interested in purchasing an original watercolour of The Rocks by well know mountain artist Jim Curran. Some examples are shown here, and if you would like more information, then please contact me for further details.
Jim Curran is a freelance cameraman, writer, lecturer, climber, and artist.
He has climbed and filmed on fifteen mountain-based documentaries (including two on Mount Everest), with all the great of the British mountaineering scene, including CHRIS BONINGTON, JOE TASKER, ALAN ROUSE, JOE BROWN and PETER BOARDMAN. He has also filmed in the Andes, Caucasus and Atlas Mountains and China, and nearer home, on the Old Man of Hoy and St Kilda.
He lives in Sheffield where his painting is constantly interrupted by the attractions of the Peak District in general, and the attractions of climbing on gritstone outcrops in particular.
His films and books have won many awards world-wide, and he has been short-listed four times for the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature.
His films include Kongur, K2 - Triumph and Tragedy, Barnaj, and Trango, all produced by CHRIS LISTER of Northern Films in Leeds.
Book credits include Trango, The Nameless Tower, K2 - Triumph and Tragedy, Suspended Sentences, and K2 - The Story of the Savage Mountain, which won the non-fiction award at the Banff Mountain Book Festival in 1996. He has written the authorised biography of Sir Chris Bonington, High Achiever - The Life and Climbs of Chris Bonington.
He has filmed and presented a series of climbs in the UK for the BBC's Tracks outdoor oriented strand, as well as climbing and filming on Chris Bonington's latest expedition to Tibet. He has also filmed, scripted and narrated the documentary, Rock Queen with Catherine Destivelle, the French climbing superstar, which won him and 'EMMY' award for outstanding electronic camera work.
He was Artistic Director of the annual Kendal Mountain Film Festival, and has recently completed a sixteen hundred mile bicycle ride from the north of the Shetland Islands to Land's End, and has written a book about his adventures, The Middle-Aged Mountaineer.
He has had two one-man exhibitions of his paintings and drawings: at the Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal, and most recently at the Alpine Club in 2004. He is now painting full-time.
Examples from Jim's Latest Collection
