Alan R Massen

Retiring to Our Garden Alan R Massen

Alan was born in the city of Norwich in the county of Norfolk, England in 1949. When Alan was still a teenager he started painting whilst attending art classes in Norwich. In his mid-teens he had two paintings accepted for a National Art Exhibition held in London and other major UK cities. Alan rarely picked up a paint brush until he, his wife Susie and daughter Ginny (his other daughter Mandy is married and lives with her husband Adrian in Sheffield) moved out of the city of Norwich into the Norfolk countryside in 1993. They moved to a little West Norfolk village. The village was very peaceful and pretty. This helped inspire Alan to take up watercolour painting once again. In 2004 they moved to another small West Norfolk village near Downham Market where they still live today. In 2008 Alan had to retire due to ill health (bad knees) and whilst he still painted regularly he began to spend more and more time gardening. In 2013 his wife Susie suggested that he kept a gardening diary to record his adventures in the garden and capture the changing seasons, animals, birds and the successes and failures of being a gardener he encountered. By the following year Susie suggested that he should write a book from his diary and include illustrations of both the garden and his artwork. In 2014 Alan's first book was published called 'Retiring to the Garden - Year One'. This proved such a success that Alan decided to follow this up in 2015 with his second book called 'Retiring into a Rainbow'. Then in 2015 he published 'Retiring to Our Garden - Year Two'. At the same time in 2015 he re-issued his first two books this time in a "2nd Edition". His next planned publications are: 'Skiathos a Greek Island Paradise', 'Norfolk the County of my Birth', 'England the Country of my Birth', 'Flip-flops and Shades on Majorca - Ibiza - Thassos' and 'Mardle and a Troshin' in Norfolk'.