Painter and teacher, born in Leeds, Yorkshire, where he attended the College of Art, 1947–52. For several years until mid-1950s he then taught at Harrogate College of Art. On the suggestion of the painter Terry Frost, Bell and his wife sold up their home and motorcycled to Cornwall to work in St Ives. In Yorkshire Bell had painted industrial landscapes, but in Cornwall his work took a new direction, and while still landscape-based he became concerned with land-shape and sea interactions which created abstract pictures. After short periods in Italy Bell took up a Gregory Fellowship at Leeds University in 1960. A number of teaching posts in Britain and America followed until in the mid-1970s he returned to Florida State University, Tallahassee.