Ken White Remembered

 Ken White was involved in creating art almost all of his life; for over 60 years he produced a large body of work in the form of murals, paintings and linocuts. The much loved Swindon based artist known by almost everyone in the town died on 24 December 2025 leaving behind a fantastic legacy. His funeral took place on 19 January at Christ Church and as one would expect was very well attended with people from far and wide as well as local admirers.

 Ken always took part in Swindon Open Studios and was happy to show people his studio and talk about his working methods. I became friends with his wife Jan, and one day, four of us, Ken, Jan, Tim Carroll and myself went for lunch in Aldbourne and afterwards for a walk on the nearby Downs. It had been very wet and there were large puddles, Ken painted this picture on our return from the walk, capturing the scene but with two men a dog, it takes me back to that day over 10 years ago

A benefit of keeping a blog is that a record can be kept of how involved Ken was in the arts scene in Swindon. In 2019, Ken gave two different talks to the Friends about his work, firstly in conversation with Andy Binks:

Friends of Museum & Art Swindon: Ken White and Andy Binks in Conversation

and another one later in the year with different information and again in conversation with Andy Binks, it was so popular we held the same talk on two successive evenings:

Friends of Museum & Art Swindon: Ken White: An Exhibition of his Talents

In between those two talks Ken had an exhibition at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery:

Friends of Museum & Art Swindon: Ken White's Private View

He also was very generous in giving prints as raffle prizes:

Friends of Museum & Art Swindon: Wine and Cheese Evening

He also joined in with Artsite exhibitions, here's a record of an opening night there in 2022:

Artsite Exhibition held at the Post Modern

I'll include a favourite photo of Ken with Gordon Dickinson and Tim Carroll. Gordon on the left, Tim on the right. The three were great friends with the usual jokes and rivalries between artists making relations never quite smooth between them. Gordon gave a fabulous account of his friendship with Ken at the funeral, lightening the mood a lot with amusing anecdotes.

This year, it was a great honour for Tim Carroll to be asked by Artsite who had secured funding from Swindon Borough Council to repaint Ken's Golden Lion Bridge mural. There was an opening of the mural in May and Ken signed the mural.

Here are Ken and Tim together:

and on the right you can see Ken has been added to the mural:

Angela Atkinson has written a book about Ken, Ken White: Muralist and Painter and lots of blog posts about him, including this one about the Golden Lion Bridge, the last remaining mural in Swindon.

I'm going to stop there, the more you look, the more you'll see about Ken White, he won't be forgotten in Swindon.