Staff intimations

Staff throughout the University were saddened by the deaths of two artists who had close links to DJCAD. Benni Esposito and Bill Cadenhead were both students and tutors at Duncan of Jordanstone. These intimations were written by their friends and colleagues.

Benni Esposito
by Iain Sturrock and Graham Frew

Benni was an excellent artist with a very promising career ahead of him and a popular and capable lecturer at DJCAD.

In 1993 he began the general course at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and in 1995 he took a year out to be President of the Student Association of the college. In 1999 he graduated with a first class honours in Fine Art, drawing and painting, and was awarded the James Guthrie Orchar Travelling Scholarship.

In 2001 Benni was awarded the qualification of Master of Fine Art at DJCAD. His teaching career began in earnest at this time when he held evening classes at Duncan of Jordanstone in both portraiture and life drawing. In 2003 he began lecturing on the drawing programme at Duncan of Jordanstone and for the next year and a half he combined his career as a visual artist with leading the drawing programme with another artist. As a teacher he was both charismatic and technically astute.

The full obituary can be read at: www.dundee.ac.uk/externalrelations/benniesposito.htm

Bill Cadenhead

William Collie Milne Cadenhead was born in Aberdeen in 1934. He was part of the first intake of students to work in the new Art College building on Perth Road, from which he graduated in 1955. One of the most gifted students of his year, he was awarded a post-graduate scholarship which enabled him to travel in Europe. He also studied at Hospitalfield, Arbroath, and the RA Schools in London. He returned to the Art College as a lecturer in 1961, teaching drawing and painting full-time from 1971 until his recent retiral.

As an artist he was best known for painting snowy Angus landscapes, responding well to the transient effects of light and weather. His teaching, centred on life drawing, and he wrote a perceptive essay on the importance of this for the Museum Services exhibition Life Study in 2003.