From a WEA class to
a major influence on the art world - the story of the incredible Ashington
Group of Pitmen Painters is in a class of its own.
Something
very unusual happened in the Northumberland colliery village of Ashington,
when, in 1943, a newly erected hut was proudly emblazoned with the name
Ashington Art Group. The group's first hut had been rented, but this one was
paid for with the money its members had earned from selling their paintings.
It
wasn't what you might think: the group weren't painting pictures to make money.
There were strict rules. Members rarely sold a painting for more than £1, and
the funds acquired were used to buy painting materials for the club.
Nevertheless, nine years after their formation, they had sold so much work that
they could afford their own hut.
The
efflorescence of art created in Ashington by a group of two dozen men, mainly
miners, was unprecedented, and nothing like it has happened anywhere else in
the world.
The
Ashington Group began life as a WEA class. The Workers’ Educational Association
was founded in 1903 to encourage working men to gain education at evening
classes, and it organised and paid for their visiting lecturers. In 1934,
Ashington had just done Evolution, and decided to give Art a go. The expert the
WEA sent them was Robert Lyon, a proficient muralist and portrait painter, Rome
scholar and master of painting at Armstrong College in Newcastle. After his
second lecture, he realised that black-and-white slides of Renaissance altarpieces
meant little to these men. He was stumped.
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| Rainy Day, Ashington Co-op by Oliver Kilbourn, painted 1951, collection: Woodhorn Museum & Northumberland Archives. Image from: bbc.co.uk |
Then it
occurred to him that since they were workers, they might begin to appreciate
art if they saw how it was made. He brought along some materials to his next
class, and encouraged the men to draw and paint what they saw around them. They
met every Tuesday night, bringing in what they had done at home, criticising
each other's work, painting together, smoking, chatting and drinking mugs of
tea, while Lyon told them about art, from cave painting to Picasso.
The
intriguing thing was that all this activity continued to be art appreciation:
these weren't art classes in the conventional sense. The men weren't being
taught how to paint, nor were they trying to become professional painters in
order to lift themselves out of the pit. They were miners, and they went on
being miners, as Oliver Kilbourn, one of their leading members, reflected:
"I wouldn't say I had a driving ambition to get down the pit. I just
stayed there 50 years — a working life. After a lot of groaning and grumbling,
you took pride in your job, you know. It's very skilful." Art was
something these men did as part of their lives, as a way to a richer existence,
understanding things more, getting to know each other better. "When you're
looking at a man's painting, you have plenty to say to him," was one
member's comment. Painting broke the ice.
The
atmosphere in the hut must have been a combination of freedom of expression and
concentrated attention. "You can make a mess of things and still be
accepted as a reasonable person," Harry Wilson acknowledged. "When I
paint as we do in our group, I have a feeling of freedom; here, I find an
outlet for other things than earning my living; there is a feeling of being my
own boss for a change, and with it comes a sense of freedom." Discovering
these "other things", in the free space they carved out for
themselves from their tough and often dangerous daily routine, they sensed the
tenor of their existence. "A funny thing," said Kilbourn. "Once
you've painted a picture, you feel it's part of your life, you know." His
advice to people who wanted to paint was blindingly straightforward. "Try
and paint a picture of your very own, the picture that nobody has painted
before, copied off nobody — something you feel strongly about. That's what I'd
say: start painting. It's as simple as that."
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| Dawn, Ashington Colliery, Northumberland by Oliver Kilbourn, painted 1949, collection: woodhorn Museum & Northumberland Archives. Image from: bbc.co.uk |
Right
from the start, they "tried to spread the paint about and keep clear from
the academic rules". Brown, who made some of the group's few sculptures,
observed: "A miner who uses his eyes doesn't need any life class or
lessons in anatomy to tell him where the stress comes on a man's back and
thighs when he's carrying a 4st weight on his shoulder." They painted what
they saw and knew: men feeding pigeons, or holding their whippets at the start
of a race, women making rugs out of rags — people doing things. Most of all,
they painted themselves down the pit: lying on their backs, sideways, working a
2ft seam, sharing a sandwich with a pit pony in a break, coming up exhausted after
a shift. A whole way of life now lost breathes again in these paintings.
The
Ashington Group's work is quintessentially working-class art, but it has a
profound message: it reminds us that the genuine art of our times is not to be
found in the establishment art world, in art schools, or modern-art museums,
still less in contemporary-art venues. You find art in life and not where you
expect it. Even more important, the Ashington Group says: you can make art,
too.
The
Ashington Group's paintings can be seen at Woodhorn Museum, Queen Elizabeth II
Country Park, Ashington, Northumberland
From: A Potted History of the Pitmen, Julian Spalding
The Dominion Post Season of The Pitmen Painters opens in Circa One on 4 October, with a $25 Preview performance on 3 October (the $25 matinee on Sunday, 5 October is sold out!). To book, call the Circa Box Office on 801-7992 or visit www.circa.co.nz.
