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With
the help of a friend who was stationed at RAF Innsworth Boyce Drake
came to Gloucester on a British Council scholarship to realise a
boyhood ambition and attend Gloucester College of Art for a five-year
course.
Early
days
In the early days he remembers many of the local community being
either "hostile towards you or frightened of you", although
he met a few people who were altruistic. "They genuinely couldnÂ’t
care less whether you were black, white or pink".
With
help from several people he went on to get a scholarship at
the Stuggart Institute to study restoration. In a teaching career
that spanned 12 years at Elmbridge Road, Hatherley and Oxstalls
schools he also worked as a freelance restorer for Gloucester
Museum and private collectors.
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Untold Stories |
However
he says that this created ‘a form of social insecurity’
in black people. He remembers, that whenever a black person saw
another across the street they would go across and speak to each
other.
It
was later, while at Cheltenham College, that he discovered a partly
burnt painting in an incinerator at the back of the art department
and his career took a completely different route.
With
help from several people he went on to get a scholarship at the
Stuggart Institute to study restoration. In a teaching career that
spanned 12 years at Elmbridge Road, Hatherley and Oxstalls schools
he also worked as a freelance restorer for Gloucester Museum and
private collectors.
Boyce
now runs an arts materials and stationery shop in Eastgate Street
but also fills his time doing art restoration, running classes in
restoration and calligraphy, keeping fit and singing spiritual and
folk songs at recitals.
"Jesus
said no human being is beyond redemption and I feel the same way
about paintings. No painting is beyond repair."
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