See Press Release for Exhibition

Monte was born in Edinburgh in 1923 and at six months moved to South Africa where his early childhood was spent in Cape Town. At 6, the family moved to Bloemfontein where he started school and after three years moved to Johannesburg where, at the King Edward VIIth School, his artistic ability was recognised. In 1938 he moved back to Cape Town where he started to study piano and accordion, playing in the School 'Boerorkes'.

With the start of war he joined the South African Air Force, trained as a meteorologist, and served in Italy. During a period of compassionate leave for his father's death he studied piano in Pretoria with a pupil of Vladimir de Pachman but had to return to the forces to spend V.E. Day at El Adam and V.J. Day in Italy.

After demobilisation he and a friend purchased a native trading store in the Northern Transvaal, an enterprise which was cut short when a drought stopped trading. His adventures are recounted in Monte's book Tales of Glen Furniss.

Back in Johannesburg he acted in film advertisements and Afrikaans films while he attended art classes at the Johannesburg Tech. He wanted to go on the stage as an actor but pre-war actors were given priority so instead he learned dancing at Poppy Frames Dancing School where a fellow student was John Cranko. Film advert work was scarce, so he worked as Theatre Manager at the Palace Theatre in Salisbury, Rhodesia in charge of visiting artists. This was great experience in charge of the likes of Eileen Joyce, Claudio Arrau, Florence Desmond, Anton Dolin and Alicia Markova. He gained a higher Certificate of the Royal Academy of Dancing while at the Betty Lamb School of Dancing. Then he danced in 'The Garden of Paradise' in which one of his young attendants was later to become Dame Merle Park. The Royal Ballet did not accept male dancers over 25 because they were too set in their ways, so he decided to concentrate on music and art. With his inside knowledge he wrote a ballet column in The Rhodesian magazine under the name 'The Red Shoes'.

After returning to the UK in 1959 on a merchant ship as a stowaway, he played pubs and clubs and did a stint at Fortnum and Mason as a sales assistant. Then, joining 'The Bedlams', a musical clown act, he appeared on TV in the Rolf Harris Show, the Five O'clock Club and the David Nixon Show while touring Scotland and England entertaining children. He attended life drawing classes at the John Cass Art School in London, where Turner had studied, and took exams with the Trinity College of Music.

When The Bedlams folded he bought an autohome and for 14 years was an itinerant musician, 'The Wandering Minstrel', and artist along the south coast of England. In 1988 he returned to the land of his birth and acquired a studio in Stewarton, Ayrshire where he stays now.

Monte started his pastel drawing in the sixties. As well as the 64 pastels of dancers, sportsmen, portraits, animals and birds on show here, he has executed pencil drawings of Glasgow Theatres which were made into a calendar. For years he could be seen in the front row at the RSAMD Friday concerts sketching the performers.

With his casual modesty he says of his beautifully crafted pastels "They've been hanging around the flat for years and I never thought anything of them."

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