Gerald Coulson was born in Kenilworth, Warwickshire in 1926 and taught himself to draw and paint at an early age. On leaving school, he trained as an aircraft engineer, technical advisor and illustrator, which encouraged him to take up flying and to his subsequent qualification as a pilot in 1961.

He began his career as a full-time painter in the late 1960’s having been elected a member of the Society of Aviation Artists in 1955 and the Industrial Painters Group in 1957. He later became a member of the Guild of Aviation Artists in 1971.

A painter of landscapes, coastal scenes, wildlife, railway, motoring and aviation subjects, his paintings are often dominated by big skies and the English landscape, although he is an artist whose unbounded talents lead him in a variety of exciting directions.

Examples of his paintings can be seen hanging in the R.A.F. Museum at Hendon, R.A.F. Cranwell and at the R.A.F. Staff College. The National Railway museum at York also has his work on display. Several of his works have appeared very successfully in print, ‘Ploughman and the Sea’ being the number one Fine Art Trade Guild print in 1978. He has also held successful one-man exhibitions in America.