Miles Richmond once expressed that "painting has led me to question the assumption that we simply look out at the world'' and that his ''research suggests that we both look out and look in, and the world is literally within the mind of our complex identity''. My work sets out to plot some of the geometries of a new sense of embodiment. Inevitably these representations will hardly seem recognisable or typical to eyes conditioned by the renaissance view of incarnation which photography has made ubiquitous. But they may help illuminate some who feel old ways of seeing are outworn." - Miles Richmond
Born Peter Richmond in Isleworth, Middlesex, he added Miles to his name much later in life. By the age of fourteen however, he decided to become an artist. He was the son of an Admiralty Engineer and in WWII announced he was a conscientious objector to the intense disappointment of his father, Riichmond however 'vowed to himself that he would serve his country as fervently as others sacrifice themselves in war'.
Richmond began his studies at the Kingston School of Art in the early 1940s, before, at the urging of Cliff Holden, Dorothy Mead and Susanna Richmond (his future wife). He joined David Bomberg's classes at the Borough Polytechnic. Richmond was a founding member of the Borough Group and exhibited his work in the Group's dedicated and associated shows, which were held at various venues between 1947 and 1951.
In 1954, encouraged by Bomberg, Richmond moved to Ronda in Andalusia, Spain, where he lived and worked for more than twenty years. He taught alongside David Bomberg, who had attempted set up his own school in Ronda. Richmond also later taught at Alastair Boyd's International School in Spain, and at Morley College in London.
One of his most celebrated commissions was a mural for London South Bank University's London Road building, commissioned to celebrate the Millennium and in homage to David Bomberg.
In the last weeks of his life, he chose the paintings for his final exhibition in 2008 at the Boundary Gallery, North London.
In 2008, Richmond died at his family home in Middlesbrough, surrounded by family, books, paints, paper and canvas. Practically until his last days, he had continued to paint and draw.