Noted Manx artist Bryan Kneale RA has been awarded the MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours.

The island-born artist receives his MBE for services to British art.

Bryan Kneale is known in London as a celebrated sculptor, Royal Academician and esteemed lecturer.

He has made a huge contribution to Manx cultural life including through a range of public commissions.

These include the large bronze ’3 Legs of Man’ sculpture which is familiar sight to those who pass through the island’s airport and the ’Deemster Fish’ located inside the Isle of Man Courthouse building.

Another example of his work is ’Horse’, which is part of the Tate Gallery collection in London.

In 2015, Isle of Man Post issued a stamp collection marking Bryan Kneale’s six decades of work.

Born in Douglas, Bryan Kneale studied painting at the Douglas School of Art, graduating in 1947. He then moved to London where he studied at the Royal Academy Schools.

During this time he won the Rome Prize and spent some time living in Italy.

Bryan Kneale became known as an accomplished portrait painter until, in the 1950s, he was inspired by his brother-in-law to try welding and he moved from painting to making sculpture.

In the early 1960s he became a lecturer and taught at a number of highly respected colleges including the Royal Academy of Art, before retiring in 1995. He has exhibited widely and his work can be found in many prestigious collections around the world, including The Tate in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and, of course, Manx National Heritage in the Isle of Man.

At the time of the stamp issue marking his work, Bryan Kneale said: ’I would like to say how lucky I was to have been born a Manxman. The island has been a lifelong inspiration to me as an artist.’

Another proud Manxman, Brian Christian, has received an MBE. See this week's Isle of Man Examiner.