From childhood onwards Durrant was fascinated by drawing aeroplanes, later working at Vickers from 1956-63.  After war service in the Army he attended Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, 1948-52, being influenced by Keith Vaughan and John Minton. In 1950's developed from figuration to abstraction. He said that any titles on his pictures were "meant to be interpreted as poetry, to engender a state of mind rather than describe exactly what the particular picture is." He was much influenced by European abstractionists and by English poetry, such as that of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Thomas Hardy, also by the work of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Dylan Thomas.