Thursday already? Time for a throwback... here’s another one from the “Days Like...”, a series of paintings I did back around 2002 using old black-and-white family photos as the starting point. This one’s of my great-grandad maybe in the 1950s, sprawled out on a bench with some of his pals. Proper old-school northern fellas in flat caps, you can almost hear the banter drifting off the canvas!
It’s painted in oil paint on hessian sacking, which felt just right, rough, honest, no frills. Bit like the men themselves. I used that material at the time as it carried a proper industrial vibe too so was fitting. The texture gives the whole thing weight, I remember it was quite tricky to paint on, a slow process as it didn't take the paint well at first, you had to proper daub it on to leave a mark.
My great grandad spent his life in construction particulary around Heyrod and Stalybridge, working on the coal power station, the railway, and all the related infrastructure that kept the world ticking over back then.
Revisiting this part of my family history has felt especially meaningful lately. The industry and stories of Heyrod and Millbrook have been creeping back into my recent work, both as imagined scenes in my fictional world of Harrowden, and as literal fragments unearthed during my recent artifact excavation following discussions on family and local history in the area with my dad.
There’s something grounding, literally, I’ve been digging in it, about reconnecting with these industrial landscapes. Bricks, soot, broken tiles, the ghost of factory walls still there in the woods, and layers and layers of industrial waste buried just beneath the soil. The people who shaped all this left more than just buildings, they left traces, stories, and the memory of a thousand hard shifts.
These portraits (and the objects I've uncovered), are echoes. Still speaking, still telling stories, if you care to listen. They ignite memories.
