Educating Horbury

Educating Horbury

My thanks and congratulations to Helen Bickerdike and the Horbury People’s Museum team for putting together the latest exhibit in the display cases in Horbury Library.

St Peter's School staff

It features the surprising number of educational institutions associated with the town over the years, including St Peter’s Church of England primary school, where I was lucky enough to have a series of remarkable form teachers between 1958 and 1962:

  • Miss Andrassy, who was so keen on art
  • Mr Harker who took us rambling and Youth Hostelling
  • ex-professional footballer Mr Thompson who was a terrific storyteller (even when he was really supposed to be teaching us whatever the curriculum was at that time)
  • Mr Lindley who encouraged us in drama, puppet shows and giving short talks to the whole class in the regular Friday-afternoon Storyteller’s Club
  • keen fell-walker Mr Douglas, the perfect example of a pipe-smoking headmaster with a voice like Gandalf with a Yorkshire accent.
junior artowrk
Clay head from my third year in Mr Thompson’s class, booklets and painting of the rebuilding of Golden Square, Horbury, from my fourth and final year at St Peter’s in Mr Lindley’s class (called 4D rather than 4L, we might not have been the perfect class, but we weren’t that bad).

Link

The Horbury Tapestry

Self Portrait, Batley, 1967

sketchbook

I featured my dad’s shaving mirror (which is still hanging on the wall in my studio) in this rare pre-beard self-portrait of myself, aged 16, from my first year at Batley School of Art in 1967.

I’d recently come across dip pen and Indian ink for drawing and I was fascinated by 19th century engravings, hence all that cross-hatching. This was probably drawn with the finest nib I’d come across, the Gillot 1950.

Self portrait sketchbook

At about that time I’d been reading J. W. Dunne’s An Experiment with Time and Nothing Dies, which might explain my interest in infinite progression:

  • the drawing isn’t complete without the sketchbook that is lying on the table in front of the mirror
  • drawing of the sketchbook isn’t complete until it includes said drawing
  • and the drawing of the drawing isn’t complete until . . . etc, etc, ad infinitum

Skechers

trainers

My last pair of Skechers proved so comfortable walking around Paris that I’ve gone for another pair.

shoe box

Beetroot and Marigolds

sketches of beetroot and marigold

Immediately I start drawing, a hoverfly zooms in and settle on the lime green top of my pen. As I work there’s a continuous chiff chaff and a v. loud blackbird, with house martins chittering overhead.

Despite several overnight frost setbacks our veg is making progress.

Eucalyptus

A eucalyptus with long strips of sloughed bark in a plantation of eucalyptus close to the former Woodhorn Colliery, Ashington, Northumberland.

I find it hard to believe that this is the regular way a eucalyptus would shed its bark, has this tree been struck by a lightning?

Heart Urchin

art urchin sketch

I photographed this heart urchin, Echinocardium cordatum, on the strandline at Druridge Bay in April.

One reason that I’ve started doing daily drawings again is to make a record of how my tremor effects me in the run up to my physio appointment for my thumb problem in two or three weeks’ time.

When it’s bad the tremor certainly results in a lively drawing but, when I get over my current cold, I look forward to being a little bit more in control!

Knotted Wrack

knotted wrack

Knotted wrack, Ascophyllum nodosum, has single bladders in the middle of its fronds.