Dale Richards was offered his first solo show, when he was sixteen years old, in Devonport’s The Little Gallery owned by Jean Thomas who supported a number of emerging artists from the NW Coast area. Dale won the Owen Tooth Memorial residency and a travel grant to France in 1974. The exposure to French culture and art was a huge inspirational lift to the young painter with great European artists work being easily accessible. After returning to Sydney and doing odd jobs, but always painting, Dale moved to Berlin in 1982 spending almost a year there, had a solo show at a renowned commercial experimental art space – Gallery Dia. Traveled​ through Europe for a while eventually returning to Sydney after a stint in New York and held a solo show at the Rex Irwin Gallery, Sydney. Dale shared studio space with numerous artists including Gary Shead who regards Dale as a very good painter. Despard Gallery first exhibited his paintings in 1993; the exhibition was titled ‘The incoming Tide’.Since returning to Tasmania twenty years ago, Dale has lived and painted in the Opossum Bay and South Arm area, about 40 minutes out of Hobart, overlooking the Derwent. Dale has always been a figurative artist, his characters are occasionally melancholic, but always compelling. I recall overhearing two visiting physiologists discussing Dale’s work in the gallery, “There’s a case study in this bloke.”