#pitmenpainters

Got taken to Durham for Last Trip before gearing up for Open Studio (!!!). Discovered the Mining Art Gallery. Some wonderful pictures, including by Pitmen Painters (the name given to a disparate group of northern miners after some joined a 1930s part-time art class whose young tutor encouraged them to “paint what you know”. Excellent advice generally).

Here are some nice examples and a good review, including this quote about Norman Cornish, who: ’when interviewed by Gordon Burn in 1970 for a piece in The Journal said he was “fed up to the back teeth” being called ’the pitman painter’ and "I'm sick of being looked at like some kind of zoo animal or specimen. You know the sort of thing ...out of the depths comes this bloke and he paints his pictures. It assumes that a man in a mine is not up to writing or painting or playing music, but it simply isn't true.”’

And in Durham itself (hilly, picturesque, full of students) discovered Norman Wade’s prints. No other images of the City I saw there are a patch on his.