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The Alchemy of Paint

Spike Bucklow is a research scientist and teacher at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, a department of the Fiztwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.

He has always enjoyed painting but has never been a painter. He has been a steel-worker in Australia, a farm-labourer in Sweden and has quarried potato-stones in Somerset. He has also synthesised pheromones for cockroaches, worked on films and TV, making special effects with contributions to The Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones, and Spitting Image. Along the way, he picked-up a degree in Chemistry, a diploma in Artificial Intelligence, a masters in Painting Conservation and a doctorate in Art History. All of which has coloured The Alchemy of Paint.