Versatile artist, born in East Ardsley, Yorkshire, father a steel worker, his mother employed in a mill. Worked as a painter and decorator, attending Batley College of Art part-time, then studied for a year at Leeds College of Art, working mornings in a Wakefield mill to pay for the course. After National Service washed dishes and painted in the Isles of Scilly for two years, then spent about 10 years in London, returning to Yorkshire in the early 1970s. Mixed shows in London included Nicholas Treadwell Gallery, and had a series of solo exhibitions including New Vision Centre Gallery, 1963, and Queen Square Gallery, Leeds, 1965. Durham’s other works included a huge abstract mural for Morley Corporation swimming baths, early 1970s; publication of the book Angus Pangus and the One Jump Giant, 1973; from the late 1970s creation of pictures based on real-life Yorkshire characters; and in 1992 production of forest folk sculptures at his studio in the Walkley Clogs complex, Mytholmroyd.