City scenes no one else notices

Nov 15 2008 by Barbara Hodgson, The Journal

Barbara Hodgson meets a local artist literally moving with the changing landscape.

AS a former designer at Swan Hunter, Roy Francis Kirton has no difficulty seeing the beauty in industry, which is why the shipyard’s cranes feature in his new exhibition.

They – and that instantly recognisable skyline – are gone now, but the artist’s bird-like structures ensure a permanent reminder; so too will his impression of Gateshead’s now-doomed ‘Get Carter’ car park.

Kirton picked disappearing architectural features of the North East as the theme of his latest exhibition now showing at Blagdon Gallery in Northumberland, but confesses “then I got side-tracked”.

So now, he sums it up as iconic local buildings, both familiar and unusual in that many of us pass them by with scant notice.

Not so Kirton, whose sharp eye takes it all in, faithfully capturing small details in his colourful, cheerful paintings.

“They’re perhaps buildings other people don’t notice,” he says. “Like Gateshead Town Hall – I’ve never seen anyone do a painting of it and it’s such a lovely building.”

Other subjects are quayside rooftops seen from the Tyne Bridge; Ouseburn School; and his personal favourite, Emerson Chambers, the beautiful listed building at the Monument which houses Waterstone’s bookshop.

They’re in a ‘higgledy piggledy’ style, as he calls it, suggestive of movement and life in the city centre streets.

Kirton, 63, who has studios at The Biscuit Factory where he regularly has work on show, loves nothing better than setting off early morning, coffee and materials in hand, and taking up a position to capture what he finds.

He draws it all at the scene, including people he sees, or meets, there. In a painting of Pret a Manger at the Monument, for instance, is a family group with a child who’d mistaken the then-bearded artist for Santa Claus.

As the light moves during the day, he moves with it; the resulting fluid lines and wonky buildings adding the quirkiness to his pictures.

Kirton says of painting the Emerson Chambers: “It was January, very cold and sunny. The sun kept moving so I kept moving, and it was a higgledy piggledy drawing which looked quite nice and free.”

A scene near the Akenside Traders pub on The Side, captures a group of people starting a night out. Kirton later realised he’d forgotten to give one man a head – which he thought appropriate given the likely drunkenness to come so left it as it was.

Often, passers-by stop and chat – other times the attention is unexpected.

He laughs as he recalls a recent occasion when he was peering over the Tyne Bridge, preparing to sketch rooftops below.

“I was probably leaning over to see the detail,” he says, “then a panda car drove onto the pavement and two policewomen got out and asked my name.

“They said they’d had a report from a car driver that someone was going to jump off the bridge – they still took my name and address.

“It was quite funny but things like that happen all the time.”

He loves the North East, a constant source of inspiration to him.

His habit of noticing details which others might miss began when, at the age of 15, he won a scholarship to art college – a student at the same time as The Animals’ Eric Burdon – and was regularly sent out on the streets with a sketchbook.

Later he joined the Interior Design Unit at Swan Hunter. “It was my first job and it was fantastic,” he says, recalling the atmosphere and the activity – also now gone.

He then went travelling in the Far East, Australia and New Zealand, but: “I’d always wanted to paint and had in the back of my mind the thought that one day I would do it.”

Before taking the plunge, there came various jobs – though Swan Hunter was “the best five years I’ve ever worked”; involvement with young graffiti artists; and an art stall on Armstrong Bridge in Jesmond. He credits Blagdon Gallery’s Rob and Sheila Nicholson with persuading him to do his first exhibition in 1990.

Nowadays, aside from his watercolour landscapes and cityscapes, he’s developing in pastels: such as in his picture of Gateshead’s multi-storey car park.

“People do a lot of traditional stuff to make a living but you can’t stick with one thing all the time,” he says.

“I’ve been a full-time artist for 20 years now. I think of myself as an up-and-coming-old-artist!”

Roy Francis Kirton’s solo exhibition runs at Blagdon Gallery, Milkhope Centre, Northumberland, until November 23. Call (01670) 789944.

See more of Roy Francis Kirton’s paintings on our website www.journallive.co.uk