Artists in their element

WHEN Peter Hicks set out to research the work of fellow artist Lilian Colbourn he couldn’t have imagined it would lead to a major London exhibition showcasing the work of Northern artists.

Colbourn spent some of her happiest and most productive years in the North Yorkshire village of Staithes but Hicks noticed that interest in her art lessened after her death in 1967. His research led Hicks, a former department head at Queen Elizabeth College in Darlington, to her daughter who had a large collection of her work. This enabled them to mount a series of exhibitions which attracted the interest of London fine art dealers Messum’s.

“They took up her work and promoted it but in order to get information they had to come to me,” recalls Hicks, who lives in Danby, in North Yorkshire. They visited my studio and took interest in my work, but said I wasn’t well-enough known in the South to have one-man show.

They said they might be able to do something if I could gather around me a group of artists representative of the area.”

So he set about compiling a list of “artists of merit” from the North.

Among them were Len Tabner and William Tillyer, who are international names and have exhibited all over the world. Messum’s selected from the list and mounted an exhibition.

That was such a success that a second, bigger exhibition The Elemental North cam about and is currently spread across three major galleries in London’s Cork Street.

Featured artists in the show are Peter Brook, Lilian Colbourn, Joe Cole, Sheila Fell, Peter Hicks, Percy Kelly, Pam Poskitt, Peter Sarginson, Margaret Shields, Len Tabner, William Tillyer and Karen Wallbank.

“This second show is augmented by artists from Cumbria, so it’s a much more representative show this time,” says Hicks. “To showcase our work in London is always good. It’s nothing new for William Tillyer or Len Tabner, but for the rest of us to get the chance to show in possibly the most prestigious set of galleries in Britain is a lovely opportunity.

Hicks, like many of the featured artists, studied at Middlesbrough School of Art where he was taught by Redcar-born Joe Cole, who became his brother-in-law.

Cole’s work is on show in the new exhibition. One unusual use of his art came after he volunteered for the RAF where he trained as a rear gunner in heavy bombers. Spotting his artistic ability, the Air Ministry commandeered him as a camouflage designer and constructor. After the Second World War, he became a lecturer and then head of painting at Middlesbrough College of Art, where he helped launch many artistic careers.

Hicks believes the work of artists in the region is very different to that produced by artists in the South. “To a certain extent, the roots of the art we do up here is rooted very much in the visual world. Our work is very rugged and in your face,” he says.

“There’s something very earthy, tactile really, than you wouldn’t see from other artists in the South. This is something they have difficulty coming to terms with in the South.

“There are many other artists in the North with merit. There are a lot of great painters up here. We all live, in a sense in amazing idyllic studios to match the landscape. It’s quite fantastic.”

Dr Jane Hamilton, writing the introduction to The Elemental North catalogue, notes the connection between the elements and art in the North. Painters have been inspired by the sunshine and sudden mists of the moors and fells. For some, the constant movement of the sea along the beaches of the North Yorkshire coast is the fascination.

For others, the iron and allum-rich earth of the cliffs and moors have provided inspiration. Len Tabner went deep underground in a series of work in 1983 to explore and record his impressions of the potash mining that continues to take place deep beneath his home.

Smoking chimneys attached to a diminishing number of factories as well as blast furnaces, steelworks and mines add to “a landscape rich in contrast and variety”, she notes, “industrial eyesores sitting in the midst of the great natural beauties of moorland and coast, each serving to intensify the effect of the other.”

THE human element comes to the foreground in the paintings of Margaret Shields which, says Hicks, “are almost a document of the changes that have taken place in the Middlesbrough area”.

She was born and bred in the town, where her father was a master mariner, and studied at the local college of art where Joe Cole was life drawing tutor. She also studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London and still teaches piano in Saltburn, where she has lived for more than 20 years.

Of the exhibition, she says: “Our reactions and inspiration are different, although we’re from the same area. One of the things that surprised me when I went to the preview was how well it worked.”

Her paintings have something that most of the other art on show does not – people. Figures populate her work depicting the clash of the old and the new in the town. “I was born and brought up in Middlesbrough which is a post-industrial town feeling the problems in the 21st Century.

It’s had to revive itself several times since it was founded because traditional industries have declined or moved elsewhere. My work reflects that. I like to show how the Victorian side is diminishing but still there and quite often alongside contemporary Middlesbrough.”

She doesn’t have a plan to cover the whole town but finds drawing or painting one subject triggers another idea. “I don’t think beforehand to do this, this and this. One step tends to lead to another,” she says.

Skateboarders, churches, bus stops, car parks and ships on the Tees near her home also have a place in her art. But she points out that, despite what is written in the catalogue, she doesn’t always take husband Tom with her for what sounds like protection.

“I mostly go on my own. Just occasionally, he’ll come with me.

Places like underneath the dual carriageway with skateboarders, I prefer a bit of company. It’s not necessarily unsafe, just you’d rather be accompanied. I think it’s the same in parts of all modern urban towns.”

She also reveals that there is some “trickery” involved in her paintings She’ll have seen and drawn the figures but they might not necessarily be in the place they’re shown in her work. She does “masses of sketches”

before painting, using a tiny sketch book as she doesn’t like to be seen watching people too much.

“The thing about my work is it looks like a snapshot of a particular place but I do move things around to suit the composition. I believe Lowry did that too. Some are very much like the place but if you go with a photograph of one of my paintings you won’t necessarily see what is in the painting,” she says.

“I tend to paint and draw what I know. It’s very natural for me to do that. I love landscapes and abstract and seascapes but I’m a painter of urban subjects.”

■ The Elemental North is at Messum’s, Cork Street, London, until February 6. For more details, visit messums.com