Art inspiration from coal mines
When a group of Depression-era Geordie coal miners wanted to better themselves they hired an art appreciation tutor through the Workers Education Association.
But tutor Robert Lyon struggled to get the uneducated men to look at paintings in a different way, so he encouraged them to begin painting themselves.
They used whatever materials were to hand – bits of wood and house paint.
The resulting artworks proved so popular they started off a whole new school of painting – the Ashington Group, which continued to meet and paint for 50 years, from 1934 until 1984.
Billie Elliott writer Lee Hall has translated the miners’ story into a play that has found critical and audience success around the world.
Patrick Davies said Lyon was desperately trying to shepherd the miners’ sensibilities.
‘‘They are not thick, but they just don’t know how to understand art,’’ he said. ‘‘ They don’t know how to look at a painting and it’s not their world.’’
The cast have adopted Geordie accents for the production, but with some coaching to be comprehensible to others.
‘‘We’re treading a really nice, fine line. There’s still those lovely vowels and glottal stops.’’
Guy Langford said the language was important.
‘‘It’s not an easy accent to do, but it’s important because it defines the time, it defines the place and it defines the people,’’ he said.
Catherine Downes plays wealthy heiress Helen Sutherland, who befriended the men and became their patron.
It was a lovely play with similar themes to Billy Elliott, a search for beauty and artistic expression in a depressed environment, but it had a hard edge, she said.
‘‘These are tough blokes putting themselves in a situation like the father in Billy Elliott, of having to look at the world a lot differently.’’
The paintings represented the reality of life in the Ashington coal mining community, she said.
‘‘They thought it was a pretty strange and embarrassing thing to do. They give each other a hard time and they give themselves a hard time.
‘‘They are painting their own community. They are making art about themselves.’’
Although The Pitmen Painters is based on fact, Hall managed to make it stand on its own feet as a work of art.
‘‘ It’s not a documentary,’’ Downes said. ‘‘It’s a play inspired by a true story.’’
It spans a relatively long period of history, the mid-1930s until the mid-1940s, enabling an overview, and some personalities have been melded into a single character.