In the last of this series of live sessions on Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Week, current Portrait Artist of the Year Curtis Holder drew dancer Oti Mabuse.
Also briefly appearing, Curtis’s sleepy whippet and Oti’s little terrier.
Oti Mabuse
Category: People
Jill Nalder
Jill Nalder, actress and activist, was this week’s sitter, painted by Gregory Mason on Portrait Artist of the Week.
Jill has been taking part in hedgehog surveys in Regents Park. In the area between Primrose Hill and Regents Park she says there should be about 300 hedgehogs but the surveys have revealed that they’re down to just 27 individuals. Rather than doing a hedgehog rescue, the group are looking at ways to ensure the population is sustainable.
Jane Bagshaw, Kitchen Maid
I was at ‘The Towers’ working for Doctor Fred Walker. He had a surgery out at the other side of the road, some distance away. As kitchen maid I didn’t get out much. The housemaid used to take the child out, so she got out more.
I had a weekend off each month and then I’d go back home. No, I don’t think there were any trams. The doctor had a pony and trap and a groom to look after it.
No, I haven’t seen Upstairs, Downstairs . . . the people next door say I ought to look at it.”
Jane Bell, 7 March, 1974
This was my grandma on her 91st birthday, when we visited her at Sutton-cum-Lound in Nottinghamshire on Thursday, 7 March 1974, reminiscing about the brief period in her life when she worked in Wakefield. I’d been showing her Harold Speak and Jean Forrester’s book of photographs of Old Wakefield. From what she said, it’s hardly surprising that she didn’t have more memories of the city at that time.
By the time of the 1901 census she’d moved up to being cook, for a family in Sheffield, so her time in Wakefield must have been towards the end of the 1890s or 1900.
Clive Myrie
Kayoon Anderson painted journalist Clive Myrie on today’s live session of Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Week.
Kayoon reused a canvas, the first portrait that she’d ever painted from life.
The presenting team included Kate Bryan and Tai-Shan Schierenberg.
Russell Tovey
Thanks to Sky Arts, I got a chance to draw actor and one of this year’s Turner Prize judges, Russell Tovey, today in a one-hour session of Portrait Artist of the Week. I won’t be standing by the phone next week to find out if I’ve won the coveted title as I’ve already seen some of the competition, however some artists had an advantage as they took the chance to start 3 hours earlier as the live programme was preceded by a podcast session. One hour drawing from a screen was enough for me.
At first I thought that perhaps I’d do better if he just sat still instead of chatting to the artist painting his portrait but really that was the point of the session. I could have drawn from a photograph otherwise. The way his expression changed and the way the light changed made the session feel similar to drawing someone in real life.
Home Movie Moments
My latest homemade birthday card is for my great nephew Zach. It celebrates the home movies that my brother, sister and I made in the days of Standard 8 cine. As you can see, Bill took the action roles, often at risk to life and limb, with my sister guest starring as the ‘Hostile Alien’, ‘The Thing’ and, no doubt hoping to break out of being typecast, a World Security agent scanning the skies for invaders from outer space.
Our friends were regularly in the cast, launching flying machines and hatching dastardly plots for world domination. Mostly we filmed in our garden; the rhubarb patch made a suitably lush jungle but for a more dramatic setting we headed for the local quarry.
But we did consider health and safety. I remember us discussing the possibility that our flying machine might overshoot and end up crashing down onto the railway line. In the event it plummeted vertically downwards when we launched it from the top of Horbury Quarry although I stood well back when filming, just in case.
John Lennon in Wakefield
It would have been John Lennon’s 80th birthday this week, on the 9th, so I’ve dug out this four-second snippet, filmed in very shaky Standard 8 cine from our black-and-white television, when John and Yoko were appearing on a chat show, probably The Eamonn Andrews Show in the spring of 1969.
I was surprised when my friend Hilary told me that in the early 1960s she’d been at the Saturday morning ABC Minors’ matinee at the ABC Regal cinema in Wakefield when The Beatles made an appearance. About twenty years ago I met a woman who had worked at the Regal at the time and who remembered telling off John when, after the performance, he offered her young daughter a cigarette.
My painter friend Jill told me that one of her tutors at art college (this would have been Manchester, 1969-1972) had previously been a tutor at Liverpool and had caught the young Lennon urinating down the lift shaft.
Finally, as a teenager, my brother’s daughter Hannah learnt the drums from at musician who’d been on the northern circuit in the early 1960s. His group had appeared on the same bill as The Beatles (possibly in Doncaster?), so after the show he’d approached John to say how much he liked their music.
“I especially like Yesterday“, he enthused.
“One of McCartney’s.” said John, and turned away.
Laurel & Hardy in Wakefield
Almost a decade before The Beatles performed at the Regal, Laurel & Hardy made a brief appearance, again at a children’s matinee. My friend Richard Knowles was taken by his uncle and remembers two elderly men coming onto the stage and waving at everyone, although at the time he didn’t know who they were.
Remembering Karen
We’ve been saddened to hear of the untimely death of a member of Wakefield Naturalists’ Society, Karen Nicklin, who also – as in my cartoon – volunteered at the RSPB St Aidan’s reserve.
“As a really keen walker and hiker, Karen spent time planning and undertaking walks that combined nature and the landscape and I remember well the talk she gave recently at our members’ evening when she wowed us with views of the spectacular scenery and wild flowers from a recent trek in the Austrian Alps.”
John Gardner, President, Wakefield Naturalists’ Society, wakefieldnaturalists.org
It’s just three weeks ago that we last saw her on that pre-‘Rule of Six’ Naturalists’ field trip to St Aidan’s. As she served me a socially-distanced shade-grown coffee (shade-grown saves trees) afterwards, I asked her what the news was from the Loch Garten ospreys. She replied that, because of Covid, she’d missed out on volunteering there for the first time since 2004. She told me that she hadn’t even managed to add an osprey on her year list. She was obviously missing them, and we’ll miss her.
Mr Moore, General Science, Ossett Grammar School
“Carbon dioxide turns limewater milky, excess turns it clear again.”
“I put my teeth in my back pocket one day and they bit me!”
“You’ll end up in the ‘B’ form with all the other Charlies!”
Mr Moore, General Science teacher, Ossett Grammar School, c. 1963
Mr Moore’s lessons at Ossett Grammar School in the 1960s were a mixture of science, musical hall jokes and outrageous opinions, hence his nickname ‘Loony’. He had a particular fondness for the Isle of Man, where I assume he grew up.
Most memorable incident: phosphorous igniting during one of his demonstrations . . . which then set fire to the rest of the phosphorous as he attempted to put it back in the jar.
His wife taught science at Highfield School, Horbury. I remember that she always wore her hair coming down across one side of her face and I’m told that this was because she had been badly scarred in a laboratory accident while carrying out research during World War II. I’m told that, of the two of them, she was more highly qualified. I knew her to say hello to but the little that I’ve heard about her background comes to me secondhand.
Ossett Grammar School, 1962-67
Having drawn all my form teachers from infant and junior school, how could I not continue and include my teachers from Ossett Grammar School, from 1962 to 1967.
Miss Eves had her classroom at the right-hand end of the prefabricated classrooms, opposite the school dinners kitchen. Her specialist subject was religious education.
Mr Foster’s classroom was down the slope from Park House, the oldest part of the school, in a recently-built block of single-story classrooms. He was a mathematics teacher.
Mr McGrady, the music teacher, was based, as you might guess, as far out of earshot of the rest of the school as possible, in the music room in the other, smaller, block of ‘temporary’ prefabricated classrooms overlooking the school playing field.
Mr Mason’s classroom was in the brick-built block of the school, towards the art room end. I can’t remember what his specialisation was. English perhaps. At the end of summer term he left the school and went to teach in Africa.
Mr Beaumont was the woodwork teacher. Again his classroom was in the brick-built block, this time at the gymnasium end.
I didn’t stay on into the sixth form. I was ready and eager to start at art college.