The following was written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.

Derek Boshier was born in 1937  in Portsmouth, England.  He studied at the Yoevil School of Art from 1953 to 1957 and at the Royal College of Art from 1959 to 1962.  He is a contemporary of David Hockney, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips and Kitaj.  He is also one of the group of young artists who, in 1961, launched Pop Art in Britain and therefore was included in shows in the Paris Biennale, the Hague, Vienna and Berlin, Munich and York. 

He taught at the Central College of Art and Design and the Hornsey College of Art in London from 1963 through 1973, and the Royal College of Art from 1973 through 1975 and in 1975 at the University of Victoria, Vancouver Island, Canada.   

In the content of his pictures Boshier showed man as "Manipulated Man", according the human figure the same treatment as mass-produced consumer goods. All the elements in his work were taken from printed representations, advertisements, etc. and nothing from life.   

Boshier came to the United States in 1979 and returned to painting about the same time. He attributes the return to a desire to work again in color and a desire to reexperience the physical act of applying paint to canvas. He moved to Houston, Texas, and began creating works that drew on Texas  culture for their subjects. As well as commenting on a basic bond of vulnerability that ties all of us, Boshier's works force us to reexamine our perceptions of the individuals, real or fictional, who hold a fascination in our society.   

Sources include:   
The Oxford Companion to 20th Century Art, edited by Harold Osborne   
Robert Hughes in ARTnews, November 1984