CHRISTMAS GREETINGS
Date Posted: 19th December 2024
Once again I’m sending a charity donation instead of a Christmas card. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you all but it is disturbing to see people sleeping on the streets in our towns and cities. No Christmas cards for them! The numbers have grown massively as rents and evictions have increased. So this year I’m supporting Crisis at Christmas. Your Christmas card by Percy Kelly is at the top of this newsletter.
As I write this an exciting year ahead is unfolding. The Sheila Fell exhibition at Tullie house in Carlisle is perfect for a visit over Christmas. There’s nothing better than an outing for you and family and guests to a good thought provoking exhibition. There are more than 90 works on show each one a gem as well as film footage of the artist in Aspatria and in her studio in London and that is the tip of the iceberg. Andrew and Eleanor Bradley, retired Cambridge academics, took on the task of finding every piece of work Sheila did to photograph and publish in a Catalogue Resonne. After 4 years of intensive research and travel it will be published later this year. Sheila Fell, the daughter of a miner and seamstress, was born in the Cumbrian village of Aspatria in 1931 and died at the early age of 48. She became a friend of L S Lowry and a Royal Academician building an enviable reputation in the art world which makes me wonder how much more she would have achieved had she lived longer. I have written much more about her in my last book Life Class in the chapter “The man who dreamed horses.” (£5 on the Kelly web site under merchandise £8 on Amazon.) And more about her life in my first book Hercules and the Farmer’s Wife (see the chapter “Cumberland Fell” which is for sale on Amazon £6.99 hard back). The exhibition at Tullie House runs until 16th March so plenty of time to catch it before it moves to Sunderland and opens 5th April for 3 months. I also made a youtube - Sheila Fell’s Cumberland. click on https://youtu.be/q0cEHXCFNZI it is full of stories and lovely images of her work.
INSPIRED BY INDUSTRY opens 18th January at The Beacon Whitehaven. There will be some newly discovered Percy Kelly works that I feared were lost for ever, as well as some of the Copeland Collection of paintings that haven’t been seen since the early 1990s. As usual with all these exhibitions there are stories attached about the industries along the west Cumberland coast and the artists who recorded them in art. I will try to be there in the gallery every Saturday and will also be delivering a lecture about Percy Kelly in Whitehaven in the 60s. I will alert you to dates and times in my next newsletter when you’ve recovered from the Christmas Spirit.
More good news WORDS BY THE WATER is again returning to Theatre by the Lake in March and I will be showing and talking about the mysterious film that arrived to me from France last year completely out of the blue. The 3 talks and showings in April last year were quickly booked out so this is another chance to find out why Percy Kelly was writing to a Paris gallery owner in 1964, why he sent a reel of film to him , what was on the film, what happened next and how it reached me intact nearly 60 years later in 2023. The full programme has just gone to press and booking of events will open once it has been distributed.
I will remind you of all this (and more) in due course.
So have a wonderful Christmas break. See you in 2025.