Koot Chambers is an artist of immense talent, energy and expressive power who has been living and working in West Yorkshire for many years. He uses his airbrush with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. Koot is a popular figure in Saltaire and some of his fans have proposed him for the role of (unofficial) mayor of "the village". When not watching one of his huge collection of Spaghetti Westerns  Koot will almost certainly be in Fanny's Ale-House or canal-side with Sparky the musical dog (see Caroline's pictures). And talking of pictures, when he does occasionally paint one, it may well include either a skull or a magpie. The skulls are part of the stock-in-trade of heavy metal, which used to be the artwork Koot was most involved with --- in the early 1990's he produced album cover artwork for the Exploited, the Almighty, Freak of Nature etc. These days his airbrush work is focussed on personal subjects such as adult-oriented tesselations and doing the illustrations for a book he has written about a magpie's revenge on a murderous gamekeeper. Sex and/or violence permeate both strands of work. Koot has also been working in the more traditional method of oil on canvas, producing a series of much-admired portraits of some of the Saltaire luminaries. Now that he has been brushing up (sorry!) his oil technique he is preparing to accept commissions from naked supermodels, preferably with more money than sense. His influences are wide-ranging, and he quotes from the psychedelic 'low-art' world of Rick Griffin and Kelley-Mouse, but is also interested in the 'high-art' society portraiture of Singer Sargent  and Anders Zorn. Even in his advanced years Koot still considers himself a student, and is ever ready to throw himself into one project or another, either artwise or communitywise. Recent projects include the completion of an MA in sculpture studies, and playing the part of a sculpted lion in Eddy Lawler's Saltairy Tales, a community musical performed at the 2005 Saltaire Festival.