PAINTING THE TOWN!

Padiham suddenly seems a much brighter place – thanks to a particularly fine pair of murals celebrating the life and times of the local community. It’s street art at its most vibrant and visually appealing, accessible to anyone who cares to stroll through town. Two gable ends, one depressingly dark, the other a blank space, have been magically transformed and now radiate optimism and civic pride.

Sheffield-based Chris Butcher and Gavin Renshaw from Preston, two celebration”, not just in the annual Whitsuntide procession – a northwest tradition stretching back more than two centuries – but also on the many other occasions people turned out often to the accompaniment of a brass band. “It’s an embodiment of all of them, a parade of intergenerational pride, cohesion and festivity,” he says, with feeling, “based on hundreds of archived photos of all kinds of occasions including Remembrance Days and Coal Miners’ rallies.”

“I’ve always had an eye on the street art scene,” he continues, “and now I am actively engaged in it during the summer months.” Having just emblazoned a moving image depicting the railway’s navvies outside Clitheroe’s Longitude Gallery, he is now beginning an exciting project at the mid-point of the Leeds-Liverpool artists very much in demand, have produced them using spray paints.

They form part of the Padiham Townscape Heritage Programme, a £1.4m National Lottery-funded fiveyear programme – now in its final year – which has, among other things, made possible restoration work on 12 buildings in the town conservation centre. The Gable Arts Project is the brainchild of a partnership involving residents and business owners, Burnley Council and Mid-Pennine Art. Gavin Renshaw’s magnificent mural, commanding the corner of Station Road and Burnley Road, captures all the pride and pageantry of local street parades. You may have seen it called Whit Walks, but the artist assures me its actual title is Splendour. He aimed to capture the “outpouring of civic pride, banner culture and street canal at Church, near Accrington. In August, he adds colour and character to Didsbury’s commemoration of the astonishing achievements of the Manchester Corinthians, a groundbreaking women’s football team founded in the late 1940s, who played at Fog Lane Park.

Originally from Manchester, Gavin studied Fine Art at Preston University before working in graphic design, later becoming part of the flourishing art community at Preston’s Birley Studios. When the weather is unsuitable for outdoor work, he will be found in his studio there, painting in acrylics or gouache.

There is nothing precisely new about the idea of the urban landscape as a canvas for the artistic expression of local culture. It’s been around since the 1960s in many parts of the world, and huge paintings have started to appear in Britain in recent years on the side of city buildings, often as part of a mural trail. But it’s certainly relatively new to these parts and especially welcome when the images – prominently located on each of the gateways into the townscape heritage area – so beautifully capture aspects of Padiham’s history and industrial heritage as a textile producer.

THE IMAGES BEAUTIFULLY CAPTURE ASPECTS OF PADIHAM’S HISTORY AND INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE AS A TEXTILE PRODUCER

Both artists found their inspiration in the extensive Padiham Archives housed in the town hall and worked closely with staff at nearby Gawthorpe Hall to research the area. What they came up with, in different styles, proved an instant hit with local people. Suzanne Pickering, Townscape Heritage Development Officer at Burnley Council, acknowledging the local businesses and organisations and the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, said: “The feedback from the community has been really positive. The people of Padiham are immensely proud of its heritage, and these amazing artworks are now a community asset that will celebrate the heritage and culture for years to come.”

Chris Butcher’s mural, Up the Hill, strikes a gently nostalgic note in Church Street, inspired by the old trams – resplendent in the once famous chocolate and primrose livery – that used to clank into Padiham, the western terminus of the Burnley Corporation tramway system that also linked Nelson and Colne, before being replaced by buses in 1935. The artwork incorporates a beautiful peacock motif from Gawthorpe Hall’s textile collection, one of the largest in the UK. It’s based on a piece of embroidery done in 1921 by Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth, the last member of the great landowning Shuttleworth family to live at the Hall, which she opened to the public as a ‘craft house’ and bequeathed to the National Trust on her death.

Gavin’s work has all the pulsing vibrancy of poster art, to which it bears a close resemblance. “It’s a fairly simple and traditional process,” he says, making light of the enormous physically demanding effort that goes into it, to say nothing of the high degree of skill, “which begins with scaling up the original drawing onto the wall.” That drawing was based on numerous preparatory studies.

Working from a mobile platform, a ‘cherry-picker’, his medium is acrylic-based, high pigment Montana spray paints, quick-drying, and able to withstand the elements. He reckons he used about a hundred different colours and 200 cans of paint to complete the job and get the desired effects of light, shade and perspective from flat blocks of colour. “Laying different colours next to each other, some with only slight tonal differences, does things on the eye, creates the depth.”

Last year Gavin completed another National Lottery-funded project; the links in the chain are of equal strength, featuring Preston’s local industrial heritage. The much-admired collage of images adorns the front of the Harris Museum, Art Gallery, and Library, including portraits of former workers at the Courtaulds’ factory, which opened in 1939 and quickly became one of the largest local employers. It will remain in place whilst building work – due for completion in 2024 – continues on the hugely ambitious Harris Your Place project to create a community hub for cultural and educational activities.

When it opens, it will feature one of his drawings, a large-scale contemporary cityscape, set alongside earlier works of art which show Preston before the Industrial Revolution and at its height. Gavin hopes to return next year for the annual Painting Padiham event, which first put the town on the map as a centre of the arts by attracting local artists to paint it. Now, thanks to the visual appeal of the townscape heritage scheme, he might even find himself painting a street scene that captures the splendour of his own mural!

Photos by Andy Ford

NorthernLife July/Aug 23