EARLY WORKS – Paintings 1950-1960
1953
Oil on Board
Unique
61cm x 81cm
As a child, and in my early years at art school, I thought that ‘Art’ meant learning to draw and paint; difficult, often painful stuff. For pleasure I made and painted imaginative toys out of wood, much of it from old ammunition boxes or the frames of army huts, or from aluminium from crashed aircraft. It never occurred to me that these might be that mysterious quality ‘Art’ nor did I worry about recognition or ask myself “Should I be doing this?” or “Am I in step with the Zeitgeist?” or “What will the cognoscenti of the art-world think?” All I felt was a passionate desire to make and paint things. Now, looking back on childhood, I think with admiration of so independent a philosophy. The end of the war gave artists, model-makers and amateur inventors a supply of material that appeared endless. One of the sources in South Oxfordshire was the MPRD (Metal Products Reduction Division) a vast dump for the remains of crashed aircraft close to Cowley and the Morris Motors factory. To the art world the MPRD is best known in the painting Totes Meer by Paul Nash that is now in the Tate collection.
There is a connection with the recent series ‘War Toys’.
1960
Oil on Board
Unique
61cm x 122cm
THE THAMES AT ROTHERHITHE
1960
Oil on Board
Unique
32cm x 45cm
