Collecting Art

I'm not overly fond of seeing my own artwork about the house.  I know others do it but I've always rather liked purchasing or better still exchanging work with other artists.  It started back at school but sadly several pieces I acquired from older pupils at Heles School have never made it onto the walls of my homes - primarily because they weren't framed.

This one uses a technique of transferring newsprint images to paper, a rather popular idea amongst the sixth formers who had picked up on the work of Robert Rauschenberg through devouring the copies of ArtForum our enlightened art teacher Peter Thursby had let us have access to his personal copies of.  This is the work of Christopher Madge, but as with the others I've tried to locate their later lives on the Web but to no avail.

Another I have is by an older pupil, Ric Conn, who seemed to me immensely suave and sophisticated and who I rather wanted to model myself on.  Not least because he was willing to experiment with proper abstraction. But perhaps the most accomplished piece I acquired came from a student called Denys Avis.

It struck me then, and still does, as a really good piece of design and a very sophisticated technical print.

Of more recent times...

Nowadays I'm not as busy as I was.  In fact more often than not I'm hardly pushed at all!  When we can, other obligations., funding etc., we try to get away.  Over the past few years we've been fortunate to obtain residency opportunities in both Cornwall and Shetland that have enabled us to spend time in these wonderful locations for artists whose work still depends on stimuli from such experiences.  Here I'm using the phone camera to capture something of the Cornish coast in a very benign winter evening.  The Cornish trip was especially good.  It took place right on the tip of Cape Cornwall, for most of history believed to be the most westerly point of the county, only to be superseded by Lands End when 'proper' measurement came along.  But Lands End has been privatised, with all the consequent degradation we might expect.  The Cape, saved for the nation through the good works of Heinz (our beans and soups contributing), is only a few miles north but a world away from the commercialised nightmare of the 'End'.

It's a great place to sit and think but also to make work, like the painting above, that I've titled Priests Cove.  As so often with my paintings anyone looking for a representational view will be disappointed  but I like to think that I capture something of the spirit of the place.

  

Skule's Out

In the spirit of de-cluttering my life (and making it easier to sort out at its end!) I'm junking a lot of stuff.  Amongst my papers are a clutch of essays written on the PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate of Education) course I took in 1975/6.  In amongst the scribble nestled this photograph of a display I made on my teaching placement at Frank F. Harrison school on the Beechdale estate in Walsall.  Looking back over the essays (and the feedback) it seems I was a deal more authoritarian back then, certainly more opinionated and rather less competent and talented than I suspect I imagined!

My tutor on the course, the wonderful Arthur Hughes, showed great forbearance as well as warmth to me, despite my appalling attendance record (I blagged off many lectures etc., relying on my wife Sue's notes, to go to my studio overlooking the Gas St. Basin).  Perhaps as a consequence I bumped along getting mainly 'b''s for my essays.  Reviewing them the assessments are very generous.

Just for fun I attach the blurb for the course...

More on the Speedway

The Speedway at Exeter was a real passion for several years (see earlier post).  I was also an avid collector of the Speedway Star & Post, a regular magazine covering the sport.  Here are the back pages for each of seasons 63, 64, 65 and 66 when the Falcons were featured.

Of course being very young I didn't understand the economics of the 'game' so when Jimmy Squibb arrived for season 64 I was made up.  With Len Silver our captain and rapidly improving Alan Cowland we must be set for success.  Little did I know - that Squibb had been drafted in to replace Silver (off to Hackney)...my annoyance is plain to see above!

A year later and I was at it again - this time obliterating poor Tim Bungay though Cliff Cox seemed a decent replacement, both good riders but not in the same class as Len.

To emphasise the dangerous nature of this sport one of the new team members above was Jack Geran, an Australian rider of considerable experience and seen below in a pit side portrait with fellow aussie Neil Street on the cover of the magazine.

Sadly Jack died in a pretty ghastly crash at the track later that year.  An annual competition was instigated after it.  Alongside many other (and happier) memories was the arrival of exotic teams from behind the 'Iron Curtain'.  Difficult though it is to recall now but back then Poles and Russians excited much interest.  I was especially a fan (following his appearance at the County Ground) of Andrej Pogorselski seen here

so much so I bought a rosette to support him in the World Individual Riders Championship later in that year.

A little later on when the USSR arrived I transferred my support to Gab Kadirov (who I now think was Gabdrakhman Kadyrov, six time winner of the Ice Speedway World Championships).

Not least as he gave me a glove as a souvenir in the pits and taught me how to say thank you in russian (it sounds like bloguverda...ish!)

The Derby Daze

For quite a few years in the early part of the 21st century my son Dexter and myself were season ticket holders at Derby County football club.  We saw a few good times interspersed with long periods of fairly indifferent action.  The 2006/7 season was one of our better times...we travelled down to Wembley in May for the championship playoff final where a goal from 'Pearo' (Stephen Pearson) sank the Baggies (West Brom) and sent us back to the Premiership.

If Pearo was the hero of the day then it also belonged to Billy Davies our then manager under whose stewardship this triumph was achieved.  We started the season that August in high spirits with the prospect of excitements when the big boys came to visit.  We were away in August so missed the first two home games -a draw against Portsmouth and a narrow defeat to Birmingham so our first match took place against Newcastle in September.

I don't recall much of the game but we did run out 1 - 0 winners.  But the portents of what were to come were already planted in that days match programme.  A few days earlier we had a thumping by Liverpool.  It should have been obvious maybe but it wasn't yet clear how badly the side would ship goals at one end and be so toothless in attack the other.

It was a season for the record books - but for all the wrong reasons. Derby never won another match and we were relegated in March with what still stands as the worst performance by a side in the history of the Premiership (only 1 win and 11 points).  Shortly after the Newcastle game the Chairman stood down and by the end of November the often pugnacious and eccentric Billy Davies left the club.  Despite the numerous changes it took until September 2008 (just 4 days short of a year) for us to witness a home victory (against Sheffield United back in the Championship).  Is it blind faith or just stupidity that keeps us coming back for more I wonder!

Post Grad

Why the cricket jumper I don't know.  In front of a largish canvas and holding a tiny one - both rehashes of earlier work as I was struggling to find a meaningful way forward in the first few weeks of the course.

Here's a few of my fellow students on the course at Birmingham Polytechnic in 1974/5.

David Bartlett on the left and Ron Knott (now in Australia I think)

Pat Hallissey - still busy as an artist...

Clive Edwards

Ivor Jones

The Speedway

It was my absolute passion from around this time (June 26, 1961) until I went off to college in 1968...Exeter Speedway.  I'm not sure if this was the first meeting I went to but it must have been one of the earliest.  As I was only ten at the time my mother wasn't that keen despite the fact that it was only a journey of a few hundred yards from my home to the back entrance of the County Ground stadium (the meetings started at 7:30 pm and finished around 10 pm.).  It was the home of the Exeter Falcons and I can still conjure up the unique smell of the place.  Going in on the far side entrance had the added advantage that you were right next to the pits and just occasionally we managed to get in there, mingle with the riders and their machines...ah thank goodness there was a time before health and safety!