About the artist
Arthur has always enjoyed painting even from a young age and grew up in London's east end during the latter days of steam. Arthur started painting with watercolours and eventually progressed to Acrylics and noticed a vast improvement straight away. Arthur has always been a self taught artist learning from experience of painting as a hobby and has never taken an courses in art. The influence of living around steam engines led him into a career working with and on trains, which began in 1953 when Arthur joined British Railways as an Engine cleaner and later on a fireman. In 1955 he joined the Royal Engineers in as a loco fireman and then later on as a loco driver. Arthur left the army in 58 and rejoined the railways in 1960 as a guard at Kings Cross and moved on to become a freight guard at Temple Mills. It was about this time when Arthur was talking to a driver at Temple Mills who had heard he had an interest in painting (which Arthur had kept up during all this time at work as a hobby) and asked him to paint an engine. After this painting was done orders from other people came in and so began Arthur's painting career. Arthur continued to work and paint in Temple Mills before moving north to Newcastle with his wife and family. Here he kept up painting and continued to receive orders for paintings. Arthur worked in Heaton depot in Newcastle until the retiring, and by the end of his working career had sold paintings to customers all over the UK as well as abroad to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Arthur has also had paintings presented to the Queen! More on this can be found here. More recently Arthur has an exhibition of his work hosted by the owner of the Head of Steam chain of pubs in the Cluny in Byker, Newcastle More on the exhibition can be found here. please note this image file is quite large and may take some time to load on slower connections. Certain Head of Steam pubs also feature many paintings of Arthur's. Arthur lists his influences in painting from artists such as Malcolm Root and Terence Cuneo amongst others.
The Hammers
Terence Cuneo, one of the artists who influence Arthur in his painting style, was known to put small mice into his paintings for fun and also to make them more personal. Arthur like this idea and as an avid West Ham United supporter started putting a small set of hammers into his paintings. These are usually hidden away so you'll have to look hard to find them!