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My Life as a Pitman (The Deputy's Kist) by Oliver Kilbourn, 1976
When I first encountered the Group, in 1971 (at a preview in the Laing Art Gallery of works from the Helen Sutherland Collection) the surviving members were elderly and reduced in number to fewer than ten. I visited them one cold January evening in their hut. As the fire was lit and overcoats were discarded they began pulling paintings out from under tables and shelves. There they were: pictures of life above and below ground, some of the early subjects, some of the more recent gaudy experiments, scenes of allotment, club and domestic carry-on. Already they had been shown all over the country; later they were to be toured to the Netherlands, Germany and China. By 1984 the Group no longer functioned. The hut was demolished when the ground rent became unaffordable. The paintings were kept together in varying circumstances until, eventually, Oliver Kilbourn and I became founder trustees for the formally constituted permanent collection and deposited it at the Woodhorn Colliery Museum. Two years ago, following expansion and rebuilding, the paintings went on permanent display there in their own gallery.

Miner Setting Prop in Low Seam
by Oliver Kilbourn
The Onsetter by James Floyd, 1942
In Lee Hall’s play the urges, the frustrations and the twists and turns of events are composed into argument and narrative, touching and illuminating. The pictures, projected above the actors’ heads, complement the dialogue below. Robert Lyon’s catchphrase ‘seeing by doing’ has come to a fruition far removed from the original idea that he hit on one Monday night in an ex-army hut in 30s Ashington. Seeing by doing. Doing by seeing. Each time the play is performed it renews in spirit the passion that united the Group, demonstrating once again that art making is art appreciation and art appreciation is also a zest for life. In the mid-80s, not long after the last of his fellow foundermembers died, Oliver – then still working on one last set of paintings – wrote to me, putting in words what the paintings represent:

“A key factor in our long life, I think, was the fact that we were never a commercial group but preserved our idealism. We thought we were doing something that no one else could do. We were depicting a way of life both below and above ground in a mining village that only we knew by experiencing it. Life goes on and we paint life.”

“A funny thing, once you’ve painted a picture you feel it’s part of your life.”

© William Feaver, 2006

For more information, please visit the Ashington Group website (http://www.ashingtongroup.co.uk)

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