Artist who deserves place in pantheon of landscape painters

THIS column is named after my small but beautifully-formed Art Gallery in the village of Padfield near Glossop, and although many of you have tracked me down, please accept this as an open invitation to my latest exhibition, An Audience with Harry Ousey.

It’s a great honour for me, as Harry was at the forefront of abstract landscapes in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

I am always intrigued when artists and writers look at the same thing as I do, and then paint or describe the Derbyshire countryside, for example, through their own eyes in a completely different and unique way.

You either understand their references and find resonance in the observations or you don’t, but either way it does not matter so long as you have an appreciation of their efforts.

I am not what you would call an artist’s artist. I’ve too many plates spinning for that, but I do have periods when I am driven, and I can recognise from a country mile the essential components, including the compulsion to turn thoughts into images, the desire to create seemingly endless series of works.

I had no real knowledge of Harry’s body of work before a visit from his niece, Sue Astles of Glossop, but like all good fires it only needed a little spark to set the blaze.

Like me, Harry, who died in Marseilles in 1985, had spent time in the Peak District and Scotland, but he was also A painting by artist Harry Ousey whose work will be displayed at an exhibition to be held at the Laughing Badger (see details below) privy to the explosion of the St Ives Art movement, where he rubbed brushes with the likes of Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Patrick Heron, before spending a number of years in rural France until his death. It seems that Harry was never really in the ‘gang’, but in my opinion, for what it’s worth, he should have been.

All creative stories need a hint of tragedy and Harry’s revolves around the exhibition he was working towards; not only did the exhibition not happen, which could have secured his place in the recognised pantheon of British artists from the middle to late 20th century, but perhaps worse – and yet another example of his singlemindedness – he asked his wife Susie to destroy any painting which she could not carry on her return to England.

Susie only partly carried out Harry’s wishes and after scattering his ashes at Mont St Victoire, she thankfully came home with hundreds of works including paintings, sketches and notebook observations, a veritable treasure trove.

Susie, devastated by her loss, did nothing with the work until her own death in 1997. However, she did pass on the torch to Harry’s niece and bequeathed the collection to Sue Astles, of Glossop, who has been fighting for Harry’s recognition since.

Harry Ousey knew what he wanted, the fact that he may have thought he never had it, or made it, is in ways immaterial because the real prize is in the trying, and the ‘trying’ in my book is what life is all about.

I will leave the last word to Harry himself, but do encourage you to visit the exhibition: “When one is so much part of the landscape, as I am, and when one feels a great attachment to it, then some form of its presence must flow through the brush, palette knife or as so often the case, just my fingers.”