Surrealist painter, Writer, Composer and Guitar Virtuoso, Jonathon Coudrille was conceived in a Cornish cottage (appropriately called "Wy Worrie") at the end of the last World War.  His early years were spent travelling but the gypsy life was hard.

     "My father (the artist and ventriloquist Francis Coudrille) made me my first guitar from orange boxes when I was around four; (toys were few in a caravan) and I learnt to play from the musicians we met on the road.  Veteran comedian Stan Stennat sold me my first trumpet (I still treasure it) for the highly subsidised price of two pounds.  Meanwhile, I served an apprenticeship-by-osmosis in the visual arts.  As I watched my father (he had a wonderful technique) as he painted the landscape through which we constantly travelled."

     Coudrille's early formal education was at the last of the Dame schools at Ilmington, high in the Cotswolds "Children from five to twelve all in one classroom … we were taught country dancing as well as the three R's, and painting, painting, painting;  it was like a foretaste of heaven"  Coudrille was subsequently sent to a "horrible freezing monastic establishment … like a Norse Hell".  He emerged prematurely with all the virtue knocked out of him - sick, angry and subject to fits of black depression for many years afterwards.

     Out in the big wide world, he started playing guitar professionally at fourteen, making money, friends, conquests and violent enemies with equal enthusiasm.

     After a spell at High Wycombe school of art, where he met Ruralist-to-be Annie Ovenden (he had already mastered Silvershithing at Cadgwith with the retired Art Nouveau Jeweller, Poppy Quelch) he found himself at Redruth Art School, where it was possible to be taught by the distinguished sculptor, Denis Mitchell. 

     He later travelled to the New Forest to seek out another St Ives artist, the dashing Sven Berlin, who's work, visual and literary, he greatly admired.

     Alas, with the exception of the sculpture class, Redruth and Coudrille did not see eye to eye.  "It was worse than kindergarten;  I'd been working in oils since the age of seven, and here we were back with poster paints on little sheets of sugar paper."  After finding his End of Term show painting, a huge falling male nude contorted into the shape of a swastika (it was the time of the Eichman trial) painted over with emulsion "to provide a display surface" he confronted the principal.  He was told that he would never make an artist, but that as he seemed to have "limited skills" with his hands, he might take up carpentry, or plumbing.  Redruth and Coudrille now aged sixteen, parted company.

     He was soon writing the first of many topical songs for BBC television in Plymouth.  He had been "discovered" by a BBC South West news team, giving a blistering satirical performance at a "happening" on the harbour wall in St Ives.  It was here, in this famous Cornish art colony that Coudrille now lived, dividing his time between painting, music, writing, swimming and vintage cars.  The passion for the latter was instilled in him by the notable English Surrealist John Tunnard with whom Coudrille had studied following his release from Redruth.  "I appreciated for the first time, the place of colour and texture in the service of form.  It was a very inspirational experience and I still draw upon the resource of my landscape studies from this period" states Coudrille.

     He acquired his first Rolls Royce at the age of eighteen with the proceeds from a vast painting purchased by the bank of Novia Scotia, just in time to drive North where his first one-man show was a feature of the inaugural Harrogate Festival.

     His pungent wit was also for a while, a lively addition to BBC Radio's "Newstime" and the old Jack De Manio "Today" programme; still commuting to Cornwall to paint, he spent a spell in Rome making movie music.  Back home, he spent time at the British Museum researching Ancient Instruments. 

     This was intended as groundwork for his Atlantis Choral Phantasy.  His close collaborator on this was the late Biblical Music authority Wallace Madge.  Coudrille also produced the minutely accurate and detailed illustrations for his definitive book on the subject.  All this was somehow squeezed into Coudrille's life "on the road" as a professional musician.

This breathtaking schedule was (literally) knocked on the head in 1972 by a serious road accident.  Unable to play or travel, he wrote and illustrated "as occupational therapy" the remarkable Psychographic Alphabet book:  "A Beastly Collection" published by Frederick Warne in 1974.  The same year that Coudrille, propped up on stage, received the Melody Maker Top Rock/Folk soloist award.  This extraordinary book was widely praised by critics.  Indeed, it could be said to be the first truly Surreal children's book.  Copies are now much sought after as collector's items.  It was, and still is, a work of genius - a tour de force.

"A Beastly Collection" was soon followed by a number of colourful and enthusiastically received children's books for the innovative G. Whizzard imprint, including the best selling "Farmer Fisher".  This was the first picture book on the British market to incorporate a record.  Coudrille wrote, produced, sang and played most of the instruments on this record.  The book was chosen as Children's Book Of The Year.

He then returned to serious music.  Which Coudrille has performed throughout much of the world;  his highly acclaimed Caballetta Suite for the Spanish guitar was premiered in concert with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in 1988.

Since his return to Cornwall, he has retired from the concert platform to pursue painting with a new intensity.  He has work in private collections in Bombay, Stuttgart, New York, Hollywood, Johannesburg, London, Strasbourg and Moscow.

"I'm ever more aware of the rushing wings of time, how much I have squandered and how little I have left"