Stass Paraskos is an artist who has been a major influence on generations of art students. From the 1960s to the 1980s he taught at some of the most innovative art schools in Britain, including Leeds College of Art, De Montfort University and the University for Creative Arts. In the 1990s he developed the Cyprus College of Art into a creative meeting point for artists and art students from around the world, turning it into what the art historian Ben Read has called Europe's answer to Black Mountain College in the United States. Yet Paraskos was not born into the art world. His family were...