Norman Cornish

A self portrait of a thought

5 Herbie

7 Alone in thought

Flo-master pen on paper, 24.5 x 15cm

Oil on board, 33 x 27cm

9 Sarah peeling a potato Oil on board, 77 x 62cm

10 Salvin Street, man with dogs Oil on board, 56 x 77cm

11 Woman with children and pushchair Oil on board, 32.5 x 48cm

12 Early portrait of Sarah, the artist’s wife Oil on canvas, 60 x 39cm

13 St Paul’s Church, Winter Oil on board, 35 x 49cm

17 Shift change on gantry Oil on board, 53 x 75cm

19 Gantry Oil on canvas, 72 x 55cm

21 Pit road with lights

22 Towards the pit

Charcoal and chalk on coloured paper, 45 x 60cm

Charcoal and chalk on coloured paper, 53.5 x 66cm

25 The Cage Oil on board, 90 x 42cm

29 Newcastle bar

30 Two smokers

31 Enjoying a pint

33 Bar chat

34 A good hand

35 Head study

37 Club drawing - man and wife

38 Man deep in thought

39 Broadsheets in bar

41 Crowded bar sketch

42 Dog Talk

43 Tired man with dog

44 Two mates

45 Man reading paper at bar

47 Man sitting in pub corner

48 Waiting for the bus (with initial sketch)

49 Ann embroidering

50 Young man smoking

51 Salvin Street, man with dog

53 Busy bar scene with dog

56 Back street, washing day

57 Rooftop

59 Man with horse and cart

Charcoal on paper, 61.5 x 82.5cm

Flo-master pen on paper, 20 x 28cm

Flo-master pen on paper, 24.5 x 17cm

Flo-master pen on paper, 20 x 28cm

Flo-master pen on paper, 28 x 36cm

Flo-master pen on newspaper, 20 x 17cm

Flo-master pen on paper, 20 x 28cm

Flo-master pen on paper, 22 x 27.5cm

Flo-master pen on paper, 37 x 24.5cm

Charcoal and pastel on paper, 35.5 x 37cm

Charcoal on paper, 73.5 x 58cm

Charcoal and chalk on coloured paper, 48 x 67cm

Flo-master pen on paper, 29 x 38.5

Flo-master pen and pastel on paper, 14.75 x 12cm

Flo-master pen and chalk on coloured paper, 19.5 x 22.5

Flo-master pen and pastel on paper, 30 x 21cm

Flo-master pen on paper, 50 x 35cm

Charcoal and pastel on coloured paper, 63 x 48.5cm

Charcoal on paper, 54 x 69cm

Charcoal and chalk on coloured paper, 54 x 74cm

Flo-master pen and watercolour on paper, 17 x 24.5cm

Pastel on paper, 20.5 x 27cm

Flo-master pen on paper, 12 x 19.5

A self portrait of a thought Norman Cornish

We’ve long talked about Norman Cornish and authenticity; the honesty of works born of the time they depict, the lack of sentimentality, the chronicling of a community Norman was an integral part of.

All the works by Norman Cornish share this common thread of authenticity, but they share something else. We realised that on watching an old clip from the 1960s of Norman, interviewed as part of a regional TV programme. In his familiarly eloquent and deeply honest way; he says this:

“Any picture is a self-portrait of a thought. The artist feels something sincerely and deeply, or at least he ought to, otherwise he shouldn’t paint it at all.”

Norman’s work runs deeper than a record, a chronicle of a community, be it in paint and pen, Norman’s community; what all of Norman’s works also open us to are his own thoughts, his own relationship with the people and places in and around Spennymoor. It opens us up to understand what Norman saw as important, be it often the banal and mundane, what he tried to capture in his portraits, what he saw in the men and woman of The Newcastle Bar and what he perceived they reflected back to him.

What Norman’s work does is open a window to his own thoughts and reflections, his own life, at work, at home or in the various pubs of Spennymoor. Each work is a reflection of subject and artist; as Norman said:

“How can one paint about life if we don’t live, you see we must have something about which to paint and if we want to paint about life, we want to snatch little pieces of life as they happen.”

Right at the very start of curating this exhibition, we revisited Norman’s autobiography, “Cornish, a slice of life”.

First published in 1989, when Norman’s career still had over two decades left of brush and pen in-hand, it was and remains an illuminating link from word to art. Where Norman talks about his own experiences, and those of the community around him, you see the results of those experiences coming through in his work of that time.

You see the lights through the rain of the walk along the Pit Road twice a day; you see the men and sometimes even the women, in The Newcastle Bar after a day’s toil; you see Ann, his daughter, embroidering; you see life through the lens of Norman, but you see a life of experiences impacting and directing that lens; we see what Norman sees, what Norman wants us to see and what Norman has been shaped by.

A self portrait of thought is the best way we’ve ever encountered to describe just that.

Many of the works shown in the following pages are married with Norman’s own words, mostly from the aforementioned autobiography; art meeting word, that very self portrait of a thought.

- Steve & Christine Swallow

“ The local collieries have gone, together with the pit-road. Many of the old streets, chapels and pubs are no more. A large number of the ordinary but fascinating people who frequented these places are gone. However, in my memory, and I hope in my drawings, they live on. I simply close my eyes and they all spring to life.”

- Norman Cornish

Herbie

Flo-master pen on paper

24.5 x 15cm

Alone in thought

Oil on board

33 x 27cm

“ I many times drew and painted pictures of my wife Sarah, when she was busy with household chores...

I felt that her prayer-like attitude gave the pose a sense of sanctity.”

- Norman Cornish

Sarah peeling a potato

Oil on board

77 x 62cm

Salvin Street, man with dogs

Oil on board

56 x 77cm

Woman with children and pushchair Oil on board

32.5 x 48cm

Early portrait of Sarah, the artist’s wife Oil on canvas

60 x 39cm

St Paul’s Church, Winter Oil on board

35 x 49cm

“On Boxing Day 1933 at fourteen years of age

I became a working man. I set off to walk the two miles to the pit at two in the morning.

It was pitch dark and I felt very apprehensive as I walked through the tunnel under the railway embankment at the street end, eventually emerging onto the pit road.

I remember being relieved when it snowed and everything became lighter. There were no pit-head baths in those days, at least, not at this pit, so if you got wet travelling to work you were obliged to work in damp clothes…”

“ After I had been given a lamp and a disc I moved out of the lamp cabin to be confronted by a flight of steel steps leading onto a gantry which crossed the mineral line. The gantry led onto the cage bank level which was about thirty feet above ground. At the opposite end of the gantry reared a great pit-head, together with its pulley wheels and ropes.”

- Norman Cornish

Shift change on gantry

Oil on board

53 x 75cm

“ …a group of miners began to cross above us, swinging their orange, glowing oil-lamps…

In a strange way they looked like mythical Greek gods striding across the sky.”

- Norman Cornish

Gantry

Oil on canvas

72 x 55cm

“ The lights of industry and towns are like stars at night; a telegraph pole can suggest a crucifix… Pit-heads, in this shape complex, can look like windmills in old Dutch paintings. They loom up over the village.”

- Norman Cornish

Pit road with lights

Charcoal and chalk on coloured paper

45 x 60cm

Towards the pit

53.5 x 66cm

Charcoal and chalk on coloured paper

“ As we stooped down to enter the cage… I was confronted by the fact that I was amongst experienced men, quite used to the descent into the pit.

The cage dropped very rapidly. About half way down I felt that I was coming upover.

We finally landed at the shaft bottom and I was relieved to find that it was well lit by electric lights.

My mining career had begun.

I had been dropped into a man-made world and I was to learn that the dangers of gas, stone falls, the darkness and the restricted space, were all to shape these men into industrial gladiators with strict codes of behaviour.”

- Norman Cornish

The Cage Oil on board

90 x 42cm

“ If we want to paint about life, if we want to snatch little pieces of life as they happen, they could happen in an ivory tower but they’re hardly likely to. But they’re happening all the time in the mainstream of the world.”

- Norman Cornish

Newcastle Bar

Charcoal on paper

61.5 x 82.5cm

Two smokers

Flo-master pen on paper

20 x 28cm

Enjoying a pint

Flo-master pen on paper

24.5 x 17cm

“ I see two men having close conversation in a pub, their shape resembles a bridge, with their heads looking like keystones (symbolically their heads are together and conversation is a bridge between minds), I have found another bit of my personal world.”

- Norman Cornish

Bar chat

Flo-master pen on paper 20 x 28cm

A good hand

28 x 36cm

Flo-master pen on paper

Head study

Flo-master pen on newspaper 20 x 17cm

“ What I would like, that the pictures might be just important enough that people will like them, they’re looking at themselves… they’re looking at how they feel.”

- Norman Cornish

Club drawing - man and wife

Flo-master pen on paper

20 x 28cm

Man deep in thought

Flo-master pen on paper

22 x 27.5cm

in bar

Flo-master pen on paper 37 x 24.5cm

Broadsheets

“ I made drawings of pub interiors in days past because I was fascinated by the men standing at the bar drinking and talking or sitting playing dominoes.

I was attracted by the wonderful shapes that they made in their various attitudes. I also realised that life would change in some ways.

Today, people still drink in pubs, but the atmosphere has changed.”

- Norman Cornish

Crowded bar sketch

Charcoal and pastel on paper

35.5 x 37cm

Dog talk

Charcoal on paper

73.5 x 58cm

Charcoal and chalk on coloured paper

48 x 67cm

Tired man with dog

Flo-master pen on paper

29 x 38.5cm

Two mates

Man reading paper at bar

pen and pastel on paper 14.75 x 12cm

Flo-master

“ After all, we are all the victors, or victims, of life’s experiences.”

- Norman Cornish

Man sitting in pub corner

Flo-master pen and chalk on coloured paper

19.5 x 22.5cm

Waiting for the bus (with initial sketch)

Flo-master pen and pastel on paper

30 x 21cm

Ann embroidering

Flo-master pen on paper

50 x 35cm

Young man smoking

Charcoal and pastel on coloured paper

63 x 48.5cm

Salvin Street, man with dog

Charcoal on paper 54 x 69cm

“ This special world of mine is constantly changing and many of the people who

inhabited

it are no longer with us.

Many

of the places that once helped to make

that world have also passed into time...”

- Norman Cornish

Busy bar scene with dog

Charcoal and chalk on coloured paper

54 x 74cm

Back street, washing day

Flo-master pen and watercolour on paper

17 x 24.5cm

Rooftop

Pastel on paper

20.5 x 27cm

“ I made many drawings and paintings of places and people that have now gone.

I made these drawings because I found the people and the places fascinating.

I also realised that things would change in the course of time, and the drawings would become an historical record of life at that time.”

- Norman Cornish

Man with horse and cart

Flo-master pen on paper 12 x 19.5cm