New paintings and regular art updates.
I painted this teapot six years ago when I first moved into my studio at Spode. This is a medium sized acrylic on canvas. It’s from my imagination, and the flower design is based on the pattern ‘calico’ by the Burleigh pottery. I think its based in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. I made the wooden panels up from my memory. I still have this painting at my studio at Spode.
I put months of work into the murals at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. I did around twelve, but then it closed down a few years ago and eventually burnt down. The shell of the building is still there.
I used to paint in the evenings after work and most of the time on my own, and the Arnold Bennett suite that I painted in was right at the back of the hotel. The room was sometimes quite spooky! You heard odd creaks and noises, but I never felt scared although the Leopard Hotel appeared in Britain’s Most Haunted. It was semi derelict upstairs and there had been plans to restore it. Painting there was a great experience.
If you could host a dinner and anyone you invite was sure to come, who would you invite?
I would invite all my artist friends from over the years. Plus all my family. I would go to the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. It would be fully restored (it was destroyed in a fire) and all my murals would still be there.
We would chat about the old days, and what they had been doing. Find out about where they had lived after I lost touch with them. I would lay on a good meal for them depending on what food they liked. I don’t remember what they used to eat? How could I after 40 years or more in some cases… But to know their life has gone well and hopefully they have been successful.
Who wouldn’t I invite? Famous people. I would be in awe and unable to talk. Can it be possible to meet someone who is important and speak with them at their level? I just don’t know.
Questions like this trouble my imagination. It’s wonderful to think of great people, but I would be too nervous and shy!
My legacy is my art. I have painted for years. I hope that someone wants them when I’ve gone.
I was involved in painting several murals over my time as an artist, but sadly most of them have been destroyed in one way or another. I painted a mural in the stairwell of the Unemployment action centre in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent just after I finished college. Then we found the building was going to be demolished. So myself and a friend got permission to go in and take photos. Unfortunately the photographs came back blank. The film had not been attached to the spool and was not exposed!
Then I painted some murals with a council art group. Over a few weeks we worked on a school canteen (alien/ sci-fi landscape) a ward at a hospital (images of Stoke-on-Trent to aid elderly patients memories), and a memorial for the 1914 to 18 war. All of these were demolished.
Finally I did twelve murals at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. This took me the good part of two years on and off. The painting above was a mural I did of the Burslem riot of 1842? I researched it and a lot of the characters were based on local Burlem residents and people who worked at or frequented the Leopard. All of the murals were destroyed in a fire that burnt down the hotel.
I have also painted scenery for the local pantomime and Mystery plays, but I don’t know what has happened to them.
What is the legacy you want to leave behind?
So if this isn’t my legacy what is? All the paintings and artwork I have created over the years since I was a child. Not all of them still exist. Art turns out to be quite ephemeral in some ways. But I’ve sold enough that, if no one wants the ones I still have, the rest have gone to new owners. Even if they were to appear in charity shops, I hope that some do find good homes.
About a year ago, the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. was destroyed in a fire. I was distraught because I had painted several murals in the Arnold Bennett suite at the back of the hotel. I had also been an extra in a horror film called Humanus which was partly filmed there. I would love it to be restored. It was old and quirky, and episodes of ‘most haunted’ were recorded around the building. But now? It’s a shell of its former glory.
The Leopard had fallen on hard times when it was taken over by Neil Cox and Neil Crisp in the early 2000’s. They started to pull the business round and bought out the essential quirkiness of the building, organising ghost tours and revising ad improving the good and drink. It was soon a venue people loved to go in. During that time they wanted some murals painting in the back room. I spent a couple of years between 2006 and 2007 painting ten or eleven of them. Why can’t I remember?
I loved doing it, and the figures in the paintings were often based on the locals, I even gave a talk to the local history group about what I had painted and the sources I used to decide on the subjects.
Now? I will definitely visit if its rebuilt. But I don’t think I could physically paint those murals again. And as I was only paid £75 per picture, for two years of work, it was never going to make me a profit, but I did it for the love of Art and the Leopard.
Moonlight like ice, glinting frost, I wish we had cold weather. Walking round a frosty graveyard looking at ice crystals on bushes and grasses. Little pawprints trailing across the lawn, glittering as a stray moonbeam passes through wilting leaves.
A gravestone sits sideways to all the other ones. Because it’s occupant was said to be the local witch, wise woman, healer, giving remedies that were beyond the wit of man? Perhaps that moon shone down on her once, on her cottage surrounded by herbs, witch hazel, foxgloves, woody nightshade.
Don’t move, just listen, hear the rustle of bat’s in the belfry, feel the crunch of ice under your hand. Its All Hallows Eve. Perhaps this is a dream about Molly Leigh, the Burslem witch.
Still proud of this mural that I painted in the Leopard Hotel in Burslem in about 2006 or 2007. The hotel burnt down earlier this year ans all my murals were destroyed. Someone asked if the murals had been removed from the building? No they were painted directly onto the wall with emulsion paint. These were some of my favourite works and I was devastated when they went up in smoke. The root crowd included local people and staff of the Leopard Hotel plus my hubby. A lady called Margaret Moxom used an image of it for her book. The riot was in 1842 and a man was shit dead during it.
Memory from 2017 of a mural I painted in 2007. This was at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. I have a strong connection with Burslem from doing a series of murals in the hotel. Who knows whether I will do anymore?
I would love to do a bit more mural painting, or scenery, or large paintings. I’m hoping if I can get my shaking arm under control I might be able to do it.
Memories are a great thing, but also they can be tinged with sadness when you think of all the things you could have done. I do wonder about the pandemic times. Could I have done more to keep my art business going? What things can I do to actually sell my work? I’m not a sales person, I’m an artist…. I don’t think I’ll ever have a USP!
I’m very pleased to say I have had my painting ‘coast’ accepted in the three counties open exhibition in Burslem School of art later this year.
Burslem School of Art is famous for teaching artists their skills in the early twentieth century. I think Clarice Cliff was one of their students. I know the artist Arthur Berry studied there before becoming famous as the potteries ‘Lowry’.
It’s great that a physical exhibition will actually be held this year. I hope many people will be able to come and see it.
Here is a better photo of my mural that was destroyed in a fire at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem earlier in the year. The landlady was said to have come over from the Caribbean and married an English man. She then ran the hotel. The trouble is I painted this in 2006? I honestly can’t remember the story I was told and now the hotel is gone.
Mallaband-Brown