In the London Review of Books Julian Bell reviews the Tate Gallery's current exhibition on British Folk Art (which I have yet to see): http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n13/julian-bell/at-tate-britain
At the end of the review Julian Bell asks the question: "...whatever happened to British folk art? It belonged to them, it seems, and it belonged to then."
Above: Steam Threshing - on the wall of our lean-to shed (where Smokie the big stray cat lives).
About two years ago I was at a village fete and went into the village hall for a cup of tea. On the walls they had paintings by a local farmer who had just died. His house was being cleared and the paintings were on sale for £3 each (any unsold would go in the skip).
They were naive depictions of rural life in his younger days - I suppose the 1940s. Ploughmen, farm boys, milk maids. He was obviously untrained as an artist but he made up for this by the sincerity of his work and the detail of his vision.
I bought one of the paintings, which I keep in a shed (it seems more at home there among the rusty old tools and cobwebs).
But I think this answers Julian Bell's question - folk art has not gone away, you can still see it if you bother to look).
At the end of the review Julian Bell asks the question: "...whatever happened to British folk art? It belonged to them, it seems, and it belonged to then."
Above: Steam Threshing - on the wall of our lean-to shed (where Smokie the big stray cat lives).
About two years ago I was at a village fete and went into the village hall for a cup of tea. On the walls they had paintings by a local farmer who had just died. His house was being cleared and the paintings were on sale for £3 each (any unsold would go in the skip).
They were naive depictions of rural life in his younger days - I suppose the 1940s. Ploughmen, farm boys, milk maids. He was obviously untrained as an artist but he made up for this by the sincerity of his work and the detail of his vision.
I bought one of the paintings, which I keep in a shed (it seems more at home there among the rusty old tools and cobwebs).
But I think this answers Julian Bell's question - folk art has not gone away, you can still see it if you bother to look).
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