Tom McGuinness

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 19th Year

Issue

Issue No.

10

Date Released

Jun 1966

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1County Durham - Cliff Bottom
2. 2Tom McGuinness
3. 3Merseyside - Fashion City
4. 4Northumberland - Throckley works

Story

Story No. within this Issue

2 / 4

Summary

BFI synopsis: Tom McGuinness, a Durham miner-painter is a painter who finds most of his subjects in colliery life and the coal industry. Pull back from spoil heap to show terraced housing on steep hill. Painting by McGuinness. Tom walks across main street (Market Square) of Bishop Auckland with buses and pedestrians, passes through the market. Enters home at 19 Short Street. Seen at work in studio - painting, mixing oils etc; views of some of his paintings and a piece of sculpture all of which are about coal mining or mining community life. Commentary gives. His family at home (wife and two boys) with examples of charcoal drawings of the family. Entrance to Bowes Museum Arts Center (name seen) at Billingham - views of McGuinness’ paintings in the exhibition, including sign for the exhibition. McGuinness seen outside drawing an overhead aerial ropeway.
NCB Commentary - A familiar scene in Durham, colliery tips and miners houses - tranmuted by one artist’s eye.
After his day’s work at Fishburn colliery, Tom McGuinness makes his way home across the market square at Bishop Auckland - his home town.
As likely as not his mind will be on a fresh stint of work awaiting him in his attic studio at the end of Short Street. Here, in a litter of sketches, ideas, and impressions, Tom starts his afternoon shift. Tom uses a whole range of materials, charcoal, crayon, wash, but mainly oils. Heavy colours predominate ... dark blues and greens are his favourites. A little surgery is called for on this pit-bank scene in oils; somehow it’s proving difficult to get exactly right.
Tom drawss his strength and subjects from pit life ... much of it from the coalface itself.
Haunched, bony, angular figures struggle in the confined space and darkness of the pit.
Even in his surface scenes, spindly workers are bent forward in huddled determination. Tom himself offer no explanation of why he paints as he does, but his art surely speaks for itself, on canvas and in the round.
His wife likes his early charcoal work of the family. Karen and Shaen were among Tom’s earliest sitters.
Tom McGuiness, whose personal preference is for the Flemish school of painting, is finding a lot of buyers for his work. His most recent exhibition was at the modern gallery in the heart of Billingham - Durham’s newest new town.
Mining is Tom’s life, and from roots of coal his art has grown and will continue to develop.

Keywords

Arts and crafts; Mining

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
The National Archives COAL 32   /13 Scripts for Mining Review, 1960-1963

Credits:

Sponsor

National Coal Board

Production Co.

National Coal Board Film Unit