Painter in oil of the industrial north of England, using a bright palette. He was born in Stockport, Cheshire. Left school at 14 and became apprenticed to a decorator. After several years in the Army in World War II Lowndes studied painting in the evenings at Stockport College, then started painting full-time in the late 1940s. He was early on taken up by the Crane Gallery in Manchester, where he had a number of one-man shows, later showing at Crane Kalman, London. Also showed solo at Osborn Gallery in New York; Curlew Gallery, Southport; and had retrospectives at Stockport Art Gallery and tour, 1972, and Crane Kalman, 1995. From the early 1950s Lowndes began to work in St Ives, Cornwall, settling in the area for just over a decade in 1959. He later settled at Dursley, Gloucestershire, but periodically returned to Stockport to work.