'Wonky' style is a hit for artist.

Roy Francis Kirton is an artist of the old school, which is to say he prefers to get out on the street with pen and ink rather sit in front of a screen and fiddle with Photoshop.

This means, of course, that he is open to public scrutiny.

In his studio in the bowels of the Biscuit Factory, Newcastle, he recalls an encounter with an elderly Scotsman in Edinburgh while he was sketching the ornate facade of the famous old Jenners department store on Princes Street.

He'd been there all day with his paper and his trusty dipping pen and ink. "This old guy came up and said, 'Aye, laddie, that's a fine drawing. Are you going to straighten it up later?'"

He laughs aloud. To anyone looking for the kind of symmetry you'll find in an architect's drawing, Roy's paintings may disappoint. He is more interested in capturing a building's character, and that implies movement and a certain wonkiness of line.

As he explains, it is a style he stumbled on by accident with a painting of Emerson Chambers in Blackett Street, Newcastle, currently a branch of Waterstone's.

"It was January, about nine in the morning, and the sun was low and it kept moving, so I had to keep moving. I ended up with this drawing that was all higgledy piggledy. Tony Marshall (a fellow artist) came into the studio and said, 'What a great drawing'."

Roy was sceptical, but he overlaid it with bright colours and took it to be framed. At the framer's it was seen by a succession of customers who admired it and wanted to buy it. Eventually it went for pounds 350 which, says Roy, was a decent sum of money back then.

That particular painting marked a watershed in Roy's development as an artist. He looks back on it as the moment he found his style. "The important thing is trying to get your own personality into a picture and in my case that comes with a fluidity of style. Anyone can do a technically accurate, architectural-style drawing."

Roy, who is 61, was born in Newcastle and has been painting Northumbrian landscapes and North-East architecture for 30 years. As a student at Newcastle College of Art and Industrial Design (now Northumbria University) in the 1960s, he studied the latter discipline.

From 1969 to 1972 he was a designer at the Swan Hunter shipyard. Then he went travelling and sketching in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and the Far East. But his roots lie in the North-East where the wonderful Victorian buildings have been a constant source of inspiration.

He loves the patterns made by light reflected off the many windows and the ornate detail to be found above ground level. What he isn't too keen on is cars, and he tends to leave them out.

Telling another story against himself, he recalls a long session sketching the very grand South Shields Town Hall.

On successive days, ladies from a nearby office kept coming out and offering him cups of coffee. In return, he said he would send them some invitations to his next exhibition if they could give him an address.

They handed him a slip of paper and only later that night, at home in front of the TV, did he think to glance at it. "They were from the social services, care of the elderly," he chortles. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps the coffee and concern hadn't been entirely inspired by an interest in art, although he might be doing himself a disservice, since he isn't long in the tooth.

Roy's work has been exhibited in the North-East, London and Edinburgh.

This year, for the third time, he had paintings accepted by the prestigious Royal Institute of Water Colour Painters for its exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London.

However, his last solo exhibition in the North-East was back in 2000 at Browns Gallery in Jesmond, Newcastle.

A year ago, Rob and Sheila Nicholson, who ran Browns, relocated to Blagdon, Northumberland, which is where Roy's latest work goes on display and on sale tomorrow.

The exhibition will include about 30 paintings and ink sketches of landscapes and buildings.

* See Roy's work at the Blagdon Gallery, Milkhope Centre, Berwick Hill Road, Blagdon, near Seaton Burn, from tomorrow until November 19. Tel: (01670) 789944.

Article Details

Printer friendly Cite/link Email Feedback
Publication:	The Journal (Newcastle, England)
Geographic Code:	4EUUK
Date:	Nov 4, 2006
Words:	723
Previous Article:	Concert tickets up for grabs.
Next Article:	The art of business partners.
Topics:	Artists