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Showing posts with label Ken White. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ken White. Show all posts

Tuesday, 10 December 2019

Ken White: An Exhibition of his Talents

Our November talk featured Ken White in conversation with Andy Binks, with the same talk repeated for a second evening in order to be able to accommodate the large number of people who wanted to come. The talks coincided with the end of Ken's exhibition at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, and were intended to take the previous in conversations Andy had done with Ken on his life history, a stage further, concentrating more on paintings and linocuts in the exhibition. I was present for both evenings, and thoroughly enjoyed both, Andy Binks, is among other things, Chair of the Swindon Society, and has a great gift of being able to put a presentation together, make it interesting and amusing, and encourage the speaker to share information with the audience. Here they are during the talk, although it's a bit dark because the lights were dimmed for the presentation, it shows Andy questioning Ken:
I won't go through much history, but it's worth noting that Kenneth Lindley who wrote and illustrated 'Town,Time and People was one of Ken's teachers at art college.
  When I looked him up, I found a great link to Ken's murals for which he was famous between 1976-1985, but I'm jumping ahead, in 1969, artist, illustrator and graphic designer, Alan Aldridge was putting together a book, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics, published in 1970, he advertised in the Evening Standard for drawings of the group, Ken produced this painting:
Aldridge paid Ken £20 for the reproduction rights, and offered £100 for the painting, Ken declined to sell it and it hangs in his sitting room today. Andy did ask Ken if he was the only person to paint the Beatles naked, but he declined to answer!
Ken White's association over a twenty year period with Richard Branson took him all over the world, and notably 'The Scarlet Lady', a 'hybrid of ideas' was heat sealed onto the fuselage of  Virgin aircraft.
 The before and after photos of murals and preparatory drawings are wonderful, it's a shame we can't see most of them any more, there are lots of photos online and in Angela Atkinson's wonderfully illustrated book, Ken White: Muralist and Painter,  I love the imagination and careful execution seen in all of the murals, this one Ken at Highworth swimming pool is wonderful, from this:
to this
talking to a packed house:
Love this mural
and this one with lots of famous Swindon people of different eras portrayed, even David Murray John minus usual cigarette in the bottom left hand corner:
Ken also talked about how he made his lino cuts, and illustrated it with this lino cut of his cats
which when printed out and coloured in looks like this:
 There was another fascinating insight when Ken talked about his inspiration, he discussed photographs taken by Denis Bird, mainly in the 1960s, providing a great inspiration for his paintings. Seen below, Denis Bird's photograph taken beside the railway line
and Ken's painting of the same spot.
We had a great crowd on both nights
Here's a lovely photo with a great admirer after the Thursday talk:



Thursday, 17 October 2019

Ken White's Private View

The Friends' committee organised a Private View for Ken White's exhibition currently in the gallery at the museum on the first day of the exhibition. There was a fabulous turn out, with around 90 people attending, and canapes provided by The Olive Tree cafe, situated adjacent to TWIGS. I'll post a few of the photos I took during the evening.
 We had a bar licence for the evening and so were able to sell alcohol from the 'bar' seen above
 Phyllida, canapes in left hand, and Ruth above chatting
 Canapes seen on the right hand side of the photo, and below I asked Graham if he would pose with this picture because his polo shirt was almost the same colour as the smoke in the painting.
 It wasn't easy to get a photo of Ken in relaxed pose, here he is behind Vicky and Sally
 Jeremy and Marion having a chat
 Phyllida with canapes in the entrance to the gallery, with Martin enjoying them
 Sophie Cummings, Curator at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery was kind enough to come and chat about the exhibitions, and when she would be giving lunch time talks, I think.
The next FREE lunchtime talk is tomorrow 18 October from 12.30pm-1.00pm about the exhibition: 'Touring the Swindon Collection 60 years On', about the exhibition in the main part of the gallery
 Here's another photo of Ken White
 and Sophie again, in the photo below, with Angela Atkinson in blue with her back to the camera. Angela has written a book in association with Ken about his life and work, available in the museum shop, booksellers in the town, and online, it's well worth a look with masses of illustrations. I haven't read it yet, just looked at the pictures so far, and they're brilliant.
 Tom Seaward from Swindon Advertiser wrote a piece in the Adver to celebrate the show, and here's Ken below with brother Mike and his wife Sue at the end of a brilliant evening. Thank you to all those who came and made it very special. We raised almost £200 in the raffle donated by Ken, it was one of his linocuts.
After the PV, some of the committee went to relax in the Eternal Optimist where we were able to discuss the highlights of the evening.
Thank you once again to all those involved who made it such a special evening.
Don't miss Ken White in conversation with Andy Binks at 7.30pm on 28 and 29 November. Tickets from Swindon MAG or www.friendsofsmag.org