Artist Bio
Trevor P. Edmands (b. 23/4/1936) is an English painter and sculptor.
He was born in Leeds and studied at the Leeds College of Art (now Leeds Arts University), whose alumni had already included Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore and later included Damien Hirst.
Trevor began his career lecturing in art at colleges and universities in the Leeds area before deciding to devote more time to his own work. Over the years Trevor has exhibited widely throughout the UK and Europe as well as in the United States. He has had four notable London shows including exhibitions at The Mall and Medici Galleries. In 1987-88 Trevor was awarded the British Institute Award for Sculpture.​
Early Life
Trevor was born to Harold (a carpenter) and Jesse (a typist) in 1936 in Kirkstall, Leeds. It was not an artistic household but one very keen on sports. Jesse had been selected for the England Ladies Cricket Team to tour Australia, but her engagement to Harold put an end to that. Trevor too became a fan of sport both doing and watching, and he excelled at football, cricket and rugby at school and beyond.
​
Trevor’s pre school years were spent much of the time with his “Trappist” maternal grandparents, so he developed a lively internal life to entertain himself which included drawing, painting and making things. This was the start of his life as a self-taught artist.
Education
At around 16 years of age he won a scholarship to Leeds College of Art, much to his parents disappointment as they could not see the point of painting or sculpture.
​
He gained entry after submitting his earliest documented artworks Falling Waters (opposite). Recognising his prodigious talent, the College acceptance allowed Trevor to bypass the requirement to study A-levels and also defer mandatory National Service for three years until his studies were completed.
​
Personal Life
He met his first wife, Mabel in the late 1950s at a church group and did his National Service in the Army. Trevor and Mabel had their first daughter, Anne in 1960 and their second, Helen in 1967.
During this period Trevor worked as a teacher in schools and latterly at Trinity and All Saints Teacher Training College in Horsforth Leeds.
It was there that he met and fell in love with Ursula who would become his second wife. Mabel died of cancer in 1974 and Trevor and Ursula married in 1975 generating a blended family of Trevor’s daughters and Ursula’s two sons, Jonathan and Patrick and her daughter Erika.
To support her husband’s creativity, Ursula became the main breadwinner, with Trevor doing some part time work for The Open University and Bretton Hall at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Unfortunately, Ursula was made redundant from her teaching post at Leeds Polytechnic in the early 1980s and had to retrain, doing an MBA in local authority administration.
They made the decision to leave Leeds when Ursula got a job at Rotherham and later Sheffield City Council. Since that timeTrevor has been based in Sheffield and although he was a weekly visitor to Leeds for many years, when his daughter Helen died in 2013 he stopped going there very often at all. Ursula died in 2022.
Trevor continues to create and until very recently was still playing tennis every week. He spends some time visiting his daughter, Anne, who lives in Ross on Wye and enjoys a good network of friends.