Painting with light

ALAN DAVIS is crouching over a piece of dark red glass, delicately scraping off the layers of colour contained in an image of the Sun.

As he does so, shafts of light permeate the glass, casting little rays of colour around the room.

The six-inch square image comes to life in this former fitter and turner’s hands. “I am starting to reveal what is underneath the glass.

Instead of painting with paint, I am painting with light,” he says.

Having left school at 15 to take up an engineering apprenticeship, Alan, now 60, trained as an artist later in life. And it was the illuminating play of light and colour in stained glass that particularly fascinated him.

This effect is repeated a hundredfold in Alan’s larger works, such as the stunning fivemetre tall, three-panelled window which he has just installed in Hexham Abbey.

His distinctive, contemporary creation bathes the surrounding ancient stonework in swathes of light and colour. And as the light changes, fragmented images slowly dance around the remarkable architecture of the Abbey. “Where a flat painting relies on reflected light, glass will change according to the mood of the day or season,” he says.

Alan, who gained a First Class degree in art and design, specialising in architectural glass, at Sunderland University, beat 45 other candidates to win the highly prized £60,000 Hexham Abbey commission.

What thrilled him most about being selected to create this prestigious piece, which took him a year to design and make, cutting, painting and leading all the glass from his tiny studio in Lythe, near Whitby, is that it will last for centuries.

“It is such a privilege to create stained glass windows for churches and for places like Hexham Abbey because it is going to be there for another 500 to 600 years. It is stressful, but satisfying.

I have to get it right, because if there is something I am not happy about, it will ruin the rest of my life.”

What stands out about Alan’s work is its distinctive, contemporary, but timeless appeal. His semi-abstract style is inspired by medieval stained glass creations. “You see them in some of the bigger cathedrals. They are painted in a way that is almost abstract. The figures are quite stylised,” he says.

He also gets ideas from nature and often heads off to the Moors or through woodland and forests with his camera to capture what he sees.

“I am really into texture,” he says, pointing out patterns in glass inspired by trees and rocks. He doesn’t copy images. “I don’t look at a landscape and paint a scene. I sit and feel it, then portray that feeling,” he says.

The son of a carpenter, he grew up in East Dulwich, London and had always been interested in art. But there was an expectation that he would leave school early and enter a trade.

Chance brought him to Whitby after he and his wife, Jo, travelled up North on a camping holiday.

“We used to go to Cornwall and Wales and expected the North-East to be full of factories.”

When they arrived in North Yorkshire, they were blown away by the stunning scenery and friendly people of the coast and moors. “When we came, more than 20 years ago, there were hardly any people about. We fell in love with it.

It was such a diverse landscape, the sea, the coast, the rugged cliffs and rolling moors.”

Although they had no family or connections here, the couple decided this was where they wanted to raise their young family, so they swapped their one-bedroom flat in London for a semi in Whitby and moved North.

Alan, who had been working as a driver in London, didn’t have a job and enrolled on a sixmonth government work experience scheme, which resulted in a placement in a stained glass studio. “All my life I had wanted to do something creative,” he says. When the firm closed, he was made redundant and decided to set up on his own, just doing small jobs such as repairs and making lampshades.

“It was very difficult to make a living. I knew there was more to it,” he says. It was his wife, Jo, who suggested he should do a degree course in glass design. Alan was 42. “It was like a door opening. I realised how much more I could do.

That is when it really all took off,” he says. He ended up specialising in architectural glass and graduated in 1997. “I had discovered what I really wanted to do,” he says.

One of the favourite bits of his job is when he pulls the painted and textured glass, which has been fired overnight at temperatures of up to 840C, out of his kiln. It must be cooled down slowly as tensions in the glass can cause it to explode.

“I just love it. It never ceases to excite me, opening it up in the morning to discover what is inside.”

His pictures are acid-etched and painted with a special powdered glass mixture before they are fired. He uses mouth-blown, German antique glass. “You don’t want it dead flat,” he says.

Leading the windows is the last bit of the process: “It’s a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, piecing it all together.”

One of his first big commissions after graduating, a three-light window depicting the resurrection, is at St Hilda’s Church, in Whitby. He also created a window in St Thomas’s Church, Glaisdale, entitled The River of Life. Having won a number of awards, his reputation grew and he went on to work in Northumberland, Tyneside, Teesside, Durham and beyond. “I started to get a lot of work. It was having the degree that made a big difference,” says Alan, who takes around four months to complete an average window.

One particularly big contract in St Mary’ Church, Anglesey, involved creating 11 stained glass windows throughout the church.

The Hexham Abbey commission, known as the Tyrell Window, is the largest individual piece he has created. With a theme of “hospitality”, he has included images of reaching hands, angels, doves of peace, a tree and a crucifix.

The semi-abstract design is supposed to help stimulate meditation Alan talks of his own personal journey in creating the window but he recognises that, as with all his windows, everyone will have their own interpretation. “I have sought to achieve a design which is of its time and yet will remain timeless. The Tyrell Window should look as if it has always been where it is.”

As well as his increasingly popular church work, Alan undertakes private commissions and has exhibited all over the North, including Darlington, Sunderland and Scarborough.

Now he, wife Jo and daughters Jess, 24, and Elizabeth, 23, along with a teenage girl they are fostering, are about to move to a large rented farmhouse, complete with a studio for Alan which will be twice the size. “I have outgrown this place,” he says.

Alan Davis Glass T: 01947-893246/893827 W: alandavisglass.co.uk E: info@alandavisglass.co.uk

North Yorkshire Open Studios

Alan is one of more than 100 artists opening up their studios on June 8-9 and 15-16 to take part in North Yorkshire Open Studios, where artists invite members of the public to see new work in the making.

Full artist details and pictures are included in the free event guide, available from the organisers by emailing info@nyos.org.uk or can be browsed online at nyos.org.uk.