Graham Knuttle was born in Dublin in 1954 of German and English parentage and considers himself 'A Dubliner'. At the age of 18 he commenced studies at the Dun Laoghaire School of Art & Design, where he gained a diploma in fine art and sculpture, graduating with an interest in figurative work. His involvement in sculpture brought him into contact with the techniques of the older painters like Goya and Rembrandt. In 1976, at the age of 22 years, he won the Royal Canada Trust Award For Young Sculptors. Knuttel grew up with both a talant and interest in art, his mother's family having several noted architects and artists, stretching back six generations, including Thomas Cooper Gotch who cofounded the Newlyn School of Painting and was familiar with the work of Van Gogh, Cezanne and Picasso. Above all, he was an intuitave artist, interested in figure drawing and figure painting, and more concerned with expressing his feelings and painting from his heart than in the conceptual rationality of modern abstract art. He likes to paint what he sees, feels or imagines. He paints the human predicament and places the situation in urban landscape of which he is a part. He tries to use colour and form to express the emotions of his figures, using oils and acrylics in his own vibrant colour style and his forey into the world of tapestry exciting and perhaps, inevitable, where images are made up mostly of solid blocks of colour, with little use of line tonal variations that we find in his paintings. Working with silk and wool also forced Knuttel to take a relatively new approach to his art, learn new processes, a challenge he "loved" he says. His tapestries are hand-woven at the famous Aubusson Factory in France. There seems to be no doubt that he has benifited from his involvement in the twin disclipines of painting and sculpture. During his career, he has received a number of important commissions including bronze portrait of historian Maurice Craig & Patrick Collins HRHA in 1990, portrait of Sylvester Stallone & Christy Moore in 1993, bronze portrait of John B. Keane in 1996, portrait of the boxing promoter Don King in 1997 and a portrait of actor Robert De Niro in 1999 and many more. His artworks have been widely exhibited in a number of shows throughout Ireland, Hong Kong, New York, London, Spain France and Brussels and hang in many important collections.