Allan Tazzyman is an Englishman, a native of Yorkshire in the north of England, who moved to live on Crete in 2004. He has already acquired a considerable reputation for painting stunning watercolour landscapes in his own individual style which is distinctive and instantly recognisable.

The depth of colour and the quality of light he achieves in his work is unusual and rare in watercolour painting. Allan has quickly acquired a reputation as probably the foremost watercolour artist in Western Crete and his paintings are much sought after by both residents and visitors to the island. His works are now in almost every country of Europe and as far afield as Australia and the Far East.

Allan paints according to the traditional English school of watercolour painting in that he uses only the paper, water, his brushes and the paint. In other words, he does not use any artificial aids, such as masking fluid, to achieve his atmospheric results. He paints only in the open air, as he maintains that if you want to paint a landscape, you have to be in it - to see it, smell it, hear it, touch it and even taste it - to be able to capture the view with any sort of feeling, that is, you have to be able to use all five senses. This philosophy is particularly apparent in the dramatic skies for which he is noted, here on Crete now as well as previously in England.

His skies are as different as the weather conditions which produce them; as diverse as a brooding winter sky promising the storm to come through to the delicacy of light at the start of a new day in spring. As he paints, Allan aims to capture the atmosphere of what he is seeing and not just the view. As he says, “A painting must have a feeling to it; if it is just a pretty view you may as well take a photograph. His definition of a successful painting is one which makes people feel the scene, feel the atmosphere, feel the weather in it.

Why Greece and why Crete?

Very few people have ever asked “Why did you come to live in Greece?” However, many have asked “Why did you come to live in Greece?” Now that is a different matter.
The truth is that first choice would have been Rhodes. But then I am not always as practical as Jan(my partner), my heart can sometimes rule and that can sometimes get me in trouble! Jan and I had visited various Greek island together and had frequently talked of living on a Greek island when we retired. After 30 years of painting, teaching and   exhibiting, I retired, but Jan was still working. Then suddenly a lot of things happened together. The house sold after being on the market for over two years, Jan’s company downsized  and she was able to take voluntary redundancy and early retirement. Everything come together all at once and we really had to decide what we wanted to do. One idea was to look for a house which could incorporate a gallery in an historic old town near to where we were then living. But the idea of living in Greece wouldn’t go away. We did a lot of research, a lot of homework and a lot of maths  and decided that we could do it if we wonted to. It was a big step because we knew we would have to sell up completely in England to be able to buy in Greece, but we didn’t want to look back in 20 or so years and say ”I wish we had tried it!”

We decided on Crete because it is the largest island and thus has more facilities, towns, shops and hospitals and medical care is good whether it be private of state. In fact there are several heart and orthopaedic surgeons who are world’s best working in Iraklio.

Why Apokoronas?

We settle on Crete, mainly because it is greener that other areas and, purely by chance really, made Georgioupolis our base whilst we looked around. We did not specifically plan to live in the Apokoronas, but that happened to be where we found the house we liked. We wanted an old house in a small traditional village and found it in Sellia, restored and modernized it and moved in late  summer 2004. The Apokoronas is popular area and it is easy to see why-the beaches are not far from anywhere, Chania is very close and the airport and it is easy to get to anywhere else via the National Road.

What do we do now?

We have been here now for five years. We very quickly settled into the village, made easy by all our neighbours making us feel so welcome. At first we couldn’t say or understand much more than Καλιμέρα , or . Τι κάνετε, but that didn’t seem to matter. We regularly get give fruit. Wine, raki, eggs etc and, though we can’t reciprocate in the same way from our small garden, we do in other ways-for instance we were able to contact a neighbour’s  family in Moldovia by email and download a photo to let her see her new grandson for the first time.

Now What?

Our lives are very different in some ways and just the some in other. We still have to do the mundane things like shopping. Housework, decorating. Gardening, chopping wood, going to the bank/garage/office/accountants/vet, etc, etc. The different is we can do it in our own time, when we want to and at our own pace, and take a  day off to go to the beach whenever we want. However, it tedious just lazing around with nothing at all to do apart from the necessary tasks. I firmly believe that you need a purpose and intrest in something in life-and for me it was a little easie because I think that if you are doing something in the “arts” you don’t retire, you just do a little less. It was very natural for me to start painting our here and soon I wanted to exhibit. I was asked by someone who has a very good friend if I would help him make Vamos into a cultural centre by exhibiting there. I said I would exhibit for three years, which I did and I think that we were both succenful with the venture. Now I have my own gallery in building next to our house in the village, given to me to use by the local council, who are very supportive. The only stipulation is that I have to take everything out for one week every year so it can be used to prepare for the Panayia, and also if it is needed for voting in an election. We opened at the and of August 2007 and guess what? Mr Karamanlis called a general election for tow weeks later! Ah, well, that’s life! Since living here I have been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts(FRSA). I am the only FRSA on Crete and there are only three in Greece. Because you have retired here it doesn’t mean life stands still! Apart from my painting, we both enjoy keeping our garden looking good. We have a god, Henry, who we rescued even before we had a house to move in to! He is very much part of our family and keeps us amused and helps keep us fit!  Jan now has the time to take up all the interests she didn’t have time for in England when she was working all house as an executive secretary in a multy-national company-apart from doing all the admin and computer work associated with my painting and the gallery. She loves sewing in all its forms and has recently starting making lovely and original patchwork quilts for the family. She also indulges her intrest in cooking and is always trying out new recipes-last winter it was soups of all colours and types, much to my delight! All of these activities are fitted an around her new found passion for vegetable growning-with help from Alan Titchimarsh’s book. None of this was pre-planned, they simply evolved and the joy is, we have the time to do them. In fact, I don’t know how we found the time to go to work before! We keep ourselves as busy as we want to be. If we don’t want to be busy there is the beach in the summer, walks along the shoreline or the country lanes in the winter –or jost sitting with a coffee or your glass of wine in the garden or in front of the log fire with a good book at any time of the year!