The Pitman Painters; digging up the undiscovered artist

The Pitman Painters by Lee Hall
Potent Pause Productions
Q Theatre
Until December 10

Art. We know what we like, we know what we are supposed to like and we wonder why so many people don’t like the art we like.

And there is the perennial frustration around the question of “what does art mean”.

That’s the question which a group of miners ask their art appreciation tutor in The Pitman Painters. It's a play set in the north of England in the 1930s and follows the lives of five miners who form an art group. They don’t want to know about the history of art with its cupids, Greek gods and Italian landscapes or about emotional responses. They just want to know the trick of being able to work out what a painting means.

The tutor decides the best way to answer the question of what does it mean is to have the men produce art works themselves and then to discuss them.

The Ashington Group was famous from the mid 1930’s until the mid 1940’s and then, as now raises questions about the nature of art and the role of the artist.

The play follows the lives of these men who continued to be miners while pursuing an interest in producing art. It also tells of the growth of the individual men as artists and observers of their society and its environment.

It’s a play filled with mini lectures, discussions and banter about art and as the group slowly develops a language of speaking about art and their aspirations. The audience is confronted with a series of topics which are at the heart of the business of art.

In their progress they deal with all the issues; creativity, subject matter, patronage, commissions, the place of art, the role of the artist, the role of government, objectivity and subjectivity.

But this is not the stuff of philosophical treatises. This is uneducated but perceptive men who talk about art in the way they talk about mining, with direct no-nonsense language. The audience is drawn into the new world of experience the miners are discovering.

They are also not a bunch of unrecognised creatives. They are part of a social group as well, so that when Susan (played by a sprightly Josephine Stewart-Tewhiu) starts to disrobe for a life session they are shocked and stunned by such alien behaviour.

It’s a superb cast and director Paul Gittins moves them around the stage in a series of tableaux which are like animated still life paintings. Each of the actors creates believable characters with a strong sense of emotional solidity.

The smartest of the artists, Oliver is sensitively played by John Glass, brooding on his desire to be an artist and his commitment to his fellow workers. Among his eloquent rambling he provides a brilliant riff on the pleasures and insights into the abstract work of the contemporary English artist, Ben Nicholson.

Joseph Rye is a finely attuned Jimmy, the down to earth artist who paints his simple, direct, decorative works, almost oblivious of the compositional skills he manifests.

Geoffrey Snell is splendid as George the WEA coordinator and union rep who is a stickler for doing things the right way. He believes that life, WEA classes and art should all conform to rules.

Calum Gittins, who plays an unemployed boy, brings a youthful intensity to the role, as well as presenting a believable cameo role as Ben Nicholson.

Stephen Papps as Harry Wilson rounds out the group of artists superbly with his World War I veteran and strident communist who sees that the only function of art is to further the revolution.

Elizabeth Hawthorne is impressive as the upper class imperious patron, Mrs Sutherland, providing a nice foil to the miners as well as presenting another view of the art world.

Edward Newborn is masterful as Robert Lyon who takes the group through their classes, their exhibitions and new found celebrity status with a clever mixture of tutor, guide, commentator and critic.

The Pitman Painters is a great play about the human desire to understand the world about us and the attempts to make sense of the mundane and the extraordinary.